The Zahrani power plant. (Credit: Mahmoud Zayyat/AFP)
BEIRUT — The power plant in Deir Ammar, North Lebanon, will shut down for five days for technical reasons, the state-owned power provider Électricité du Liban announced on Monday, as the country continues to suffer from severe power rationing, worsened by a now three-year-old economic crisis.
Here’s what we know:
• In the statement, EDL said that the power plant has been shut down for five days “in order for the [German industrial manufacturing company] Siemens company to carry out the necessary inspection of the only operational plant in Lebanon.”
• EDL noted that the plant has been “functional for more than 41,000 hours” since the beginning of the year. This inspection ought to confirm whether the working capacity of this plant “could be extended for another 2,000 hours.”
• The Deir Ammar plant has been shut down many times in the past due to lack of fuel. EDL has recently decided to alternate its power production between this plant and the one in Zahrani, South Lebanon, to avoid the recurring scenario where Lebanon is plunged into a total blackout.
• Last Tuesday, Lebanon signed a long-awaited deal with Egypt and Syria to import Egyptian gas via Syria, which will allow the country to increase its power supply by four hours a day. However, this deal has yet to be granted an approval from the US — guarantees from the US not to impose sanctions on the countries involved under the Caesar Act passed in 2019 for any country dealing with the regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria — and financing from the World Bank.