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BEIRUT – Lebanon has no centrally generated electricity after fuel shortages forced the shutdown of its two largest power plants, a government official told Reuters on Saturday.
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“The Lebanese power grid completely stopped working today at noon and it is unlikely that it will work until next Monday or for several days,” the official said.
The state power company confirmed in a statement that the thermoelectric plant at the Zahrani plant had stopped. The Deir Ammar plant was shut down on Friday.
The closure of the two plants “directly affected the stability of the power grid and caused its total interruption, with no possibility of resuming operations in the meantime,” the statement said.
The state electricity company will try to use the army’s fuel oil reserve to operate the power plants temporarily, but that will not happen anytime soon, the official said.
Many Lebanese normally rely on private diesel-powered generators, although they are in short supply.
Lebanon has been crippled by an economic crisis that has worsened as the supply of imported fuel runs out. The Lebanese currency has fallen 90% since 2019.
Reference-torontosun.com