Electricité du Liban issued the following statement today, Tuesday: "Following Electricité du Liban's statement dated 13/12/2023, and since no new information has emerged regarding the arrival of the first part of the gas oil shipment supplied to Electricité du Liban, under the public tender conducted by the Ministry of Energy and Water - General Directorate of Oil through the Public Procurement Authority, as well as the procedures for opening the documentary credit relating to the extension of the Iraqi exchange agreement for the third year, and in light of the significant decrease in the storage of gas oil at the Zahrani and Deir Ammar plants, where levels have fallen below //6,000// cubic meters at Deir Ammar and below //11,000// cubic meters at Zahrani. Given this situation beyond the control and responsibility of Electricité du Liban as a whole, the institution informs that it has undertaken additional precautionary measures to prolong energy production for as long as possible, prioritizing the maintenance of continuous electricity supply to vital facilities in Lebanon (airport, port, water pumps, sewage, Lebanese University, prisons, and other essential facilities...), and to avoid a total blackout.
1. A generation unit at Deir Ammar has already been forcibly stopped since the peak night of Sunday, 03/12/2023, as a first step to extend the available stock for as long as possible.
2. A second generation unit, the only remaining gas unit at Deir Ammar, will be forcibly taken offline starting on the peak night of Tuesday, 19/12/2023, while keeping the only remaining gas unit at the Zahrani plant operational, in order to reduce the consumption pace of the remaining gas oil reserves in both plants. After the expected depletion of the Zahrani stock on 28/12/2023, the production unit at Deir Ammar will be brought back into service until the complete depletion of its reserve, anticipated on 03/01/2024, thus halting energy production entirely under these coercive circumstances, pending the supply and unloading of the aforementioned shipment.
These current precautionary measures will reduce the total thermal production capacity to about //200// megawatts only. The mentioned production units will be put back into service successively upon the arrival and unloading of the first part of the shipment, which was supposed to arrive between 06-10/12/2023, thereby restoring the supply to its previous levels.
It is noteworthy that had Electricité du Liban not undertaken these precautionary measures, the country would have faced a dire situation, paralyzing all public facilities in mid-December 2023 due to the current circumstances that are entirely beyond the institution's control and responsibility."
