27 July 2007

BEIRUT: Electricite du Liban (EDL)Electricite du Liban (EDL) promised on Thursday to reduce the severe power rationing early next week as the growing dependency on private generators increased the prices of fuel oil. In a statement to the press, EDLEDL said it has agreed to buy 20,000 tons of fuel oil and kerosene from the local market at the official rates, adding that the new delivery of fuel oil matches the company's specifications.

The Dir Ammar power plant is expected to receive the new shipment on Saturday.

EDLEDL added that it would speed up the delivery of fuel oil by tanker trucks to make up for the dwindling reserves in Dir Ammar plant.

Since the start of the fighting in the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp between the Lebanese Army and Fatah al-Islam two months ago, none of the ships carrying fuel oil agreed to unload at the port of Dir Ammar.

The owners of the oil tankers say insurers refuse to cover delivery of fuel oil as long as fighting near Dir Ammar did not come to an end.

This prompted EDLEDL to increase the power rationing from 12 hours a day to more than 16 hours and in some regions the cuts exceeded 18 hours a day.

EDLEDL said that Dir Ammar is expected to run at over 80 percent of its original production capacity at the end of this week.

"This will enable us to provide four extra hours of electricity each day to all regions in the country," the statement said.

But EDLEDL stressed that this all depends on security developments at Nahr al-Bared.

EDLEDL also warned citizens not to illegally connect cables on the main power lines because this will deprive other

areas of electricity.

Officials complain that electricity theft has reached alarming levels since the end of the July-August war in 2006.

They added that many Lebanese took advantage of the security deterioration to connect cables to the power lines.

Theft of electricity is one of the most serious problems facing the cash-strapped EDLEDL.

In the South and Bekaa for example, the power cuts exceed 18 hours a day, meaning that the owners of the private generators must run the machines eight extra hours.

"We usually ran our generators eight hours a day before the crisis started. But now the subscribers expect us to run them for 14 hours," a private generator owner in the South said.

He added that due to the

increased consumption, the monthly subscriptions rose from $30 a month to more than $60.

Meanwhile, many owners of private generators hiked prices under the pretext that they are running out of fuel oil.

Apart from Beirut, most Lebanese regions depend heavily on private generators.

The electricity outage has angered residents of the southern suburbs who closed main roads for three consecutive days to pressure the government to remove what they termed as the "unfair and bias treatment of Dahiyeh." - The Daily Star