Argus Media Limited

10/11/2021 | News release | Distributed by Public on 10/11/2021 02:12

Fire breaks out at Lebanon’s key Zahrani power plant

A massive fire has broken out at an oil product storage tank at Lebanon's Zahrani power plant in the south of the country, according to reports from state-owned news agency NNA.

The army has been called in to help evacuate the area and divert traffic away from the plant while firefighters work to control the blaze and stop it from spreading to other tanks at the facility. NNA said the affected tank contains gasoline, and that the cause of the fire is not yet known.

The fire comes just days after the Zahrani plant and another key facility in southern Lebanon, Deir Ammar, were forced to shut down because of a gasoil shortage. Both plants exclusively run on gasoil. Lebanon's main power provider Electricite du Liban (EDL) said the shutdown reduced total power supply to below 270MW , which "directly affected the stability of the power network and led to its complete outage, with no possibility of resuming operations in the meantime". The energy ministry said yesterday that the network had returned "to normal" after gasoil was secured from the Lebanese army's fuel reserves, although it is only enough to provide power for several hours a day.

Lebanon is in the midst of what the World Bank has described as "possibly" one of three most severe economic and financial crises globally since the middle of the 19th century. The national currency, the Lebanese pound, has lost over 90pc of its value since 2019, and 78pc of the population are now below the poverty line, according to the UN's Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

The new Lebanese government has taken steps to help alleviate the energy crisis. It signed a deal with Iraq in July that allows it to buy 1mn t/yr of heavy fuel oil from Baghdad and resell it for the products it needs. Lebanon took delivery of the first gasoil cargo under this deal last month, with 15,000t unloading into tanks at the Deir Ammar plant and the remaining 16,000t unloading at Zahrani.

Lebanon has also received several Hezbollah-brokered gasoil shipments from Iran via Syria since September. Iranian foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said during a visit to Beirut on 8 October that Tehran stands ready to continue exporting oil products to Lebanon as long as it is required. The Lebanese government is also looking into the possibility of securing electricity supply from Jordan and natural gas from Egypt, again through Syria. But those deals are likely months away.

By Nader Itayim