Major oil producer Iraq was hit by a power outage in its central and southern regions on Monday after a shutdown at a power plant in the western province of Anbar, electricity ministry sources said.
The sudden shutdown of the Hamidiya plant led to a fault in the electricity transmission network, the sources said. Temperatures in the capital Baghdad reached a high of 47 degrees Celsius on Monday. The chair of Iraq’s parliament energy committee told Reuters the outage did not affect the semi-autonomous Kurdistan region.
Many Iraqis for years have relied on privately operated generators for power as government-provided electricity was only available for a few hours a day. Some others have turned to solar power to help meet their electricity needs.
The oil ministry could not immediately be reached for comment. The electricity ministry said it was working in “full emergency mode” to restore power, the state news agency reported.
A member of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and one of the world’s leading oil producers, Iraq has struggled to provide its citizens with energy since the 2003 US-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein. In the ensuing turmoil, under-investment and mismanagement have left the national grid unable to cope with demand.
Hundreds of Iraqis protested in Baghdad in the summer of 2021, when power and water cuts gripped large parts of the country as temperatures exceeded 50 degrees Celsius.
In March, US President Donald Trump’s administration rescinded a waiver that had allowed Iraq to pay Iran for electricity, as part of Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign against Tehran. Iraq is heavily dependent on Iranian natural gas imports to generate power.
