Lebanon faces nationwide power outage after last production unit shuts down

By Stephanie Rady

BEIRUT (AA) - Lebanon's power utility company announced Saturday a nationwide power outage, including at Beirut's airport and port.

The Electricity of Lebanon said in a statement that the last group of production units at the Zahrani Power Plant, which supplies the country with electricity, went offline after running out of fuel.

This led to a complete halt of electricity supply across all Lebanese territories.

The power outage affected key facilities, including the Rafik Hariri International Airport, Port of Beirut, prisons, wastewater treatment facilities, and drinking water pumping stations.

The Zahrani Plant, in southern Lebanon, is one of the most important power generation stations in the country and currently the only operational one, supplying most of Lebanon's electricity needs.

The statement said the shutdown of all production units at this plant “came after exhausting all possible precautionary measures to prolong energy production."

The company said it “will restart the production units at the Zahrani Plant that were forcibly taken offline, in line with the storage that will be available to it after securing fuel, to gradually restore electricity supply to its previous levels,” without disclosing the time needed for this.

Over the past couple of years, the frequency of power outages in Lebanon has significantly increased due to the government's financial distress, which led to its inability to provide foreign currency to import fuel.

Lebanon's power production earlier ranged between 1,600 and 2,000 megawatts daily, but the fuel shortage in recent years has gradually reduced production to unprecedentedly low levels.

*Writing by Rania Abu Shamala in Istanbul