Baghdad - Once

again, the compass of Iraq is turning towards Germany to search for new solutions to end the electric power crisis in the country, by contracting with the German company Siemens, with which Prime Minister Muhammad Shia'a al-Sudani signed a memorandum of understanding during his recent visit to Germany last Friday.

In a joint press conference with German Chancellor Olaf Schultz, Al-Sudani announced the signing of a memorandum of understanding with Siemens to increase energy production, improve transmission and distribution processes, and reduce electrical losses in the country. Schultz also confirmed that Germany is in talks with the Iraqi government regarding the possibility of importing natural gas from Iraq after the decline Fossil fuel imports from Russia.

Iraq recently signed a memorandum of understanding with the German company Siemens to produce 6 thousand megawatts (Al-Jazeera)

Government figures

Commenting on the Iraqi-German memorandum of understanding, a spokesman for the Iraqi Ministry of Electricity, Ahmed Al-Abadi, said that the memorandum signed by Al-Sudani in Berlin will add 6,000 megawatts to the national system.

Which will lead to an increase in the hours of the electric current.

Speaking to Al-Jazeera Net, Al-Abadi stressed that the memorandum addresses the problems of transportation and distribution in the system, and the establishment of transformer stations and energy transmission lines, pointing out that the volume of domestic demand for energy now amounts to 34 thousand megawatts, while the country currently produces less than 20 thousand megawatts due to The release of imported gas has decreased, commenting that "there is a current visit by Iraqi Electricity Minister Ziyad Fadel to Iran to increase the release of gas in order to operate electricity production plants."

Muhannad Al-Khazraji believes that Iraq needs more than 12,000 megawatts, and Siemens can provide that (Al-Jazeera)

Memorandum objectives

For his part, a member of the Parliamentary Energy and Electricity Committee, Muhannad Al-Khazraji, determines the great importance of the recent Sudanese visit to Germany, because it is directly related to the issues of electricity generation and associated gas investment.

In his interview with Al-Jazeera Net correspondent, Al-Khazraji says, "The German company Siemens has a plan to raise the rates of electricity supply to Iraq by addressing the problems of increasing energy production and exploiting gas associated with oil, according to which Iraq loses an important energy resource per day estimated at 1,500 million standard cubic meters."

Regarding Iraq's need, Al-Khazraji comments that "Iraq needs more than 12,000 megawatts annually of electricity, and this shortage has led to a renewed crisis with every summer, and it must be radically addressed through Siemens."

frequent visits

Al-Sudani's visit to Berlin was not the first for an Iraqi prime minister after 2003, as former Prime Ministers Haider Al-Abadi and Adel Abdul-Mahdi preceded him in visits that resulted in the signing of memorandums of understanding for energy investment in the country by Siemens as well, without yielding anything.

Commenting on this, Al-Khazraji says, "Al-Sudani's visit differs from Al-Abadi's visit, whose era witnessed battles against the state organization, and it differs from Adel Abdul-Mahdi's visit to Berlin, where his era also witnessed popular demonstrations at the end of 2019 that forced him to resign."

Al-Khazraji goes on to point out that "the Sudanese era is witnessing a state of political and security stability with financial abundance as a result of the rise in oil prices, and this abundance may be a motive for proceeding with the agreement with Germany with the start of the implementation of the memorandum of understanding."

On the other hand, energy expert Alaa Al-Asadi asserts that "the Sudanese will not change anything through this memorandum of understanding, because his government is similar to previous governments that previously signed memorandums of understanding with Siemens and others."

In his interview with Al-Jazeera Net, Al-Asadi confirms that Iraq chose 4 companies in the field of electric energy, which are the Chinese "PowerChina", the British-Dutch "ABB", and the German "Siemens", in addition to the American "General Electric", but all of these companies hesitated. In the implementation of projects clearly.

Al-Asadi expects the energy situation to remain as it is in terms of deterioration during the next five years, as he attributes this to the slowdown in the implementation of projects in exchange for an unstable population increase with the increase in the quantities of electric energy that Iraq needs annually.

A spokesman for the Ministry of Electricity, Ahmed Al-Abadi, confirms the signing of a memorandum of understanding with Siemens to produce 6,000 megawatts of electricity (Al-Jazeera)

Which companies are better?

There is no preference between US, German and Chinese energy companies to invest in Iraq, according to energy expert Bilal Al-Khalifa, who explained that "each company has advantages that differ from the other, and that Iraq needs all of them."

He told Al-Jazeera Net, "Chinese companies operate at a lower price and under unstable security conditions, while Western companies operate at a higher quality with prices greater than their Chinese counterparts. Therefore, Iraq is between two options: price on the basis of quality or quality on the basis of price."

For further clarification, Al-Khalifa pointed out that the cost of the PowerChina contract to establish a two-thousand-megawatt solar electric power plant amounted to about one billion dollars, while German and American companies refuse to implement this project for such an amount.

Al-Khalifa supports Iraq's going towards companies that offer better offers with soft loans through international banks, and believes that "quality is very important, and that choosing reliable companies is better, even if the price of establishing stations is more expensive."

Nearly two decades after the US invasion of Iraq, the country still suffers from a great shortage of electric power (Al-Jazeera)

Guardianship of electricity

After talking about US tutelage over Iraq with regard to electric energy, Zainab Juma al-Musawi, a member of the Iraqi Parliament for the Coordination Framework coalition (which includes all Shiite forces except for the Sadrist movement), called on the Sudanese government to remove Iraq from US tutelage on energy.

In her interview with Al-Jazeera Net, Al-Moussawi said, "The American guardianship over the energy sector in Iraq has been going on since 2003 until now, as it has caused successive crises in the production of electricity and the exploitation of associated gas," noting that the entry of the German company Siemens into Iraq would mean salvation from American domination of the energy sector. , as she put it.

Al-Moussawi indicated that the electricity file is a major pressure tool widely used by the United States to obtain political and economic gains in Iraq, commenting that "the American General Electric Company played a negative role in the lack of access to electricity to the Iraqis by obstructing Siemens projects through some political tools."

Iraq has been suffering from a deepening electrical energy crisis for decades, as electricity is not available in the country except at specific hours according to a system known locally as "programmed cut-off", where the state provides citizens with electricity for certain hours in exchange for other hours of interruption, which has led to Iraqis' dependence on power generators. civil electricity, while incurring additional fees for providing limited amounts of electricity.