In Late November Iran cut its natural gas exports to Iraq due to maintenance work. The later depends upon the gas to fuel many of its power plants. It was only supposed to last 15 days but the outage is going to continue into early January costing the country a huge amount of electricity as a result.
On November 24 the Electricity Ministry reported that it lost 5500 megawatts of power due to Iran cutting off gas supplies to do repairs. Iraq imports 33-40% of its energy needs from Iran in the form of natural gas and electricity. Tehran’s work was supposed to only last 15 days but on December 26 the Electricity Ministry said Iran’s exports would be shut down for another two weeks. The costs to Baghdad have also increased with 8000 megawatts now lost. To make things worse the Ministry is doing its own maintenance which means another 5000 megawatts are no longer available.
The Electricity Ministry has complained about Tehran breaching its contract but otherwise the rest of the government has been silent on the matter. That’s because it’s unresponsive to the public and many of the ruling parties are allies of and funded by Iran and will not voice strong criticism of it.
This is the 5th time this year that natural gas imports from Iran have been cut and this trend will continue into next year. Baghdad is attempting to find alternatives by linking with other neighboring countries and signing a deal with Turkmenistan for gas but those have either not gone into effect or are not providing a large amount of power yet. Iraq is also developing its own natural gas resources but that has been a drawn out affair. That means Iraq will continue to rely upon an unreliable Iran until these other efforts pan out.
SOURCES
Al Mada, “Decline in Iranian gas supplies reduces 70% of electricity production in Diyala,” 12/9/24
Al Masalah, “Ministry of Electricity: Iran has breached the agreement to supply gas to Iraq,” 12/23/24
Rudaw, “Iran extends gas export halt to Iraq,” 12/14/24
Shafaq News, “Exclusive: Iraq loses over 8,000 megawatts as Iran extends gas plant maintenance, says Electricity Ministry,” 12/26/24
Xinhua, “Iraq loses 5,500 megawatts of electricity as Iran cuts gas supplies,” 11/24/24
Al Zawra, "The system lost more than 7 thousand megawatts ... Electricity: Iranian gas outage to continue for another 15 days,” 12/19/24
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