After the signing of the electricity agreement between Lebanon, Jordan and Syria... what are the economic and political components and obstacles of the project?

Beirut - 

In a move that bore economic and political dimensions, the Jordanian Energy Minister, Saleh Al-Kharabsheh and the Syrian, Ghassan Al-Zamil, came to Beirut, and signed today, Wednesday, with their Lebanese counterpart Walid Fayyad, two agreements, the first to supply Lebanon with electric power from Jordan, and the second agreement to secure the transit of energy through Syria to Lebanon.

The signing of these two agreements - which included technical aspects, material costs and the transit mechanism - is the culmination of months of work on two tracks: Lebanon's access to Jordanian electricity, and the second is related to the import of Egyptian gas, with the aim of raising the feeding hours to the Electricity Network of Lebanon, which imposes a severe rationing of about 22 hours per day.

Lebanon aspires, through Egyptian gas and Jordanian electricity, to provide about 10 hours of nutrition.

signature announcement

In a joint press conference, at the building of the Lebanese Ministry of Energy, Fayyad said that the agreement will provide Lebanon with 250 megawatts of electricity, in cooperation with Jordan and Syria, and that its entry into force is only awaiting the completion of a financing agreement from the World Bank, and he also indicated that Lebanon is working to sign a rental agreement. gas with Egypt.

For his part, the Jordanian minister put the timing of the agreement in the context of the "sensitive Lebanese circumstance", explaining that Jordan's political directives are to cooperate with Lebanon to the fullest.

As for the Syrian minister, he said that his country has completed all arrangements for the electrical connection from Jordan to Lebanon, and will provide all facilities to implement the agreement.

technical track

Technically, Jordan and Syria have been electrically connected to a transmission line since 2001, which was out of service in mid-2012 for technical reasons, while Syria and Lebanon are connected to several interconnecting lines, according to the Lebanese expert and consultant for oil and energy affairs, Rabie Yaghi.

Yaghi explains - to Al Jazeera Net - that the high-voltage lines were connected from Jordan to Syria after their restoration, and from Syria they will reach the Ksara area in the Bekaa of Lebanon, where there is a transmission station, from which it is distributed to the rest of the Lebanese electrical transmission stations.

It is likely that Syria will complete the restoration of the lines, while there are no problems on the Jordanian side, and Lebanon needs about 3 additional weeks to complete the rehabilitation operations.

Yaghi said that supplying Jordanian electricity is a matter of time, and is not as complicated as importing Egyptian gas, and that the two projects are complementary to each other in order to reach 10 hours of electricity, if they are fairly distributed among the regions.

Project details

In practice, Lebanon will be supplied from the surplus of Jordanian electricity, with Lebanon paying the cost directly to Jordan, and Syria will get a quantity of electricity as an allowance for transportation, and it will cost Lebanon about 12 cents per kilowatt.

Yaghi points out that this cost is less than the cost of electricity production in Lebanon, which amounts to about 20 cents per kilowatt, because Lebanon depends on heavy fuel and suffers from obsolescence and poor efficiency of its plants, while Jordan produces electricity from natural gas that it imports from Egypt, which is cheaper and cleaner .

It is expected that the total cost of the project will range between 200 and 300 million dollars annually, and it will be financed in the first year with a loan from the World Bank.

Here, the economic journalist Muhammad Wahba points out that the signing of the agreement is not considered effective unless Lebanon signs the financing contract with the World Bank, because it is the most important dilemma of the project, as it constitutes the indirect cover for all parties to the agreement, excluding them from the sanctions of the American Caesar Act, which prohibits dealing with the Syrian regime (although Assurances from Washington) that the bank does not grant loans that may expose it to penalties.

Washington previously sent several letters reassuring that the project was excluded from Caesar's sanctions, at a time when Egypt was demanding the exception of two officially signed letters to ensure its sustainability and effect.

Wahba indicated - to Al Jazeera Net - that the electricity agreement is the final form of technical and financial procedures on how to supply electricity, and define responsibilities between Syria, Lebanon and Jordan, adding that the timing of the completion of the Lebanon-World Bank agreement is not specific, and it may take time.

Lebanon’s losses in the electricity sector from 1992 to 2020 amounted to about $38 billion, according to the figures of the International Information Corporation, which constitutes about 40% of the public debt, due to several reasons such as waste from the network, non-collection, and subsidizing electricity tariffs according to an official exchange rate, which incurred the EDL’s costs. Huge losses, especially since the Lebanese pound lost more than 90% of its value.

And the Lebanese Minister of Energy had previously told Al Jazeera Net that his ministry had an actual tendency to raise the electricity tariff, and that the decision would not be taken without a study that ensures that the poor social groups are not harmed.

Wahba clarifies that using Jordanian electricity does not mean directly raising the cost of electricity, "but the project will arrange debts in dollars, and consequently, the higher the production and distribution of electricity, the greater the losses will be on EDL."

He said that Lebanon is going to raise the electricity tariff, but the agreement was not achieved in the general political sense, for fear of popular reactions a few months away from the elections, expecting that the next portion of the tariff will be unfair among the Lebanese class groups.

The journalist rules out the sustainability of the Jordanian electricity project, especially as it is linked to guaranteeing sources of funding for it, recalling that, along with Egyptian gas, they came as a political reaction that prompted Washington to accept it, after Hezbollah brought in fuel from Iran.

What are the dimensions of the project?

Muhannad Hajj Ali, a writer and researcher at the Carnegie Center in Beirut, finds that this project reinforced Jordan's role as an electricity exporter in its Arab environment.

There is a deep meaning that "Lebanon depends on Jordan to provide electricity, and Egypt for gas, and Syria to cross them later, which puts it in the category of needing about 80% of the energy sources from its Arab surroundings, if Jordan and Syria can provide about 8 additional hours of electricity," according to Al-Hajj. on me.

He told Al Jazeera Net, "Lebanon has become dependent in an unprecedented way on its Arab surroundings, and that the matter inevitably has political consequences, recalling what is happening between Europe and Russia, as the latter has become able to use the gas card to pressure the European side."

As for the Syrian regime, it is the biggest beneficiary of this deal, according to Hajj Ali, who was the first to receive its price last year, starting with Washington’s announcement of its intention to exclude the project from Caesar’s law, which allowed for official communication with it, as a friendly party and negotiator with a list of demands.

The researcher finds that the agreement enhances the influence of the Syrian regime towards Lebanon, recalling that it previously closed its borders with Lebanon when relations between the two countries became tense in 1973, "but today, he has an additional card in his hand in terms of energy transit."

Accordingly, the Syrian benefit is listed on 3 levels:

• The initial exception to Caesar's punishments.

• Normalization of relations and agreements with the neighboring Arab region of Syria after years of isolation.

• Obtaining shares of Egyptian gas and Jordanian electricity.

Al-Hajj Ali believes that Lebanon will remain in a very critical situation, because it will not guarantee the provision of sufficient money to pay the costs of electricity and gas for many years, especially since the loans are not permanent, while the political elite "does not plan for a sustainable economy that leads to the strengthening of state imports, and to achieve self-sufficiency." .