Caretaker Energy Minister Walid Fayad (L.) meets with Algeria’s ambassador to Lebanonn Adbelkarim Rakaibi. (Credit: Office if Walid Fayad)
BEIRUT — Caretaker Energy Minister Walid Fayad met with Algeria's ambassador to Lebanon Abdelkarim Rakaibi in hopes of securing quantities of oil and gas from the country, which Lebanon accused two years ago of sending defective fuel to state-owned Electricité du Liban.
Here’s what we know:
• According to a statement released by the Energy Ministry Friday following the meeting, the Algerian ambassador “expressed every desire to cooperate, promising to convey the meeting’s minutes to the concerned parties in Algeria.”
• Lebanon used to import fuel from Algeria until 2020, when Algeria’s state energy firm Sonatrach was accused by Lebanese authorities of sending tainted fuel to EDL, a claim Algeria denied. Following the scandal, Sonatrach had announced that it would not renew its contract with the Lebanese state.
• In a letter sent Friday to his Algerian counterpart, Minister of Energy and Mines Mohamed Arkab, Fayad stressed “the importance of strengthening bilateral relations between the two brotherly countries in order to overcome obstacles that prevent the resumption of the supply of fuels for the necessity of power generation plants in Lebanon.”
• Fayad told L’Orient Today last week that he was thinking about procuring fuel from Algeria, without specifying whether Lebanon is looking to replace Iraqi fuel with Algerian imports or procure fuel from both countries.
• Lebanon has yet to pay for the fuel it has received from Iraq under a contract signed last year, which ends in September. Fayad stated earlier this month that Iraq has been providing Lebanon with 80,000 tons of fuel per month, but in this period the quantity was less due to the increase in the price of fuel, ”so the quantity decreased to 40,000 tons, providing us with two hours of [power] instead of four hours.”
• Fayad, after a meeting earlier this month with his Iraqi counterpart Ihsan Abdul-Jabbar Ismail in Baghdad, said that he has "sensed" “support” for extending a fuel deal that supplies Lebanon with Iraqi fuel “if the process secures benefits for both parties.”