UN-Truth

Gaza’s Power Plant has only enough fuel for three days of operations, including today Friday 18 January.

No fuel at all reached the Gaza power plant on Friday, because of the complete closure of Gaza’s border crossings ordered by Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak on Thursday night, in response to continuous firing from Gaza into Israel.

Dr. Rafiq Maliha, project manager at the plant, said in a phone interview late on Friday afternoon that “we are trying to minimize consumption so we can extend the operation”.

To do that, he said, there are only two options: the plant could either run two turbines at partial level, and shut down sooner, or run just one turbine, and keep operating a bit longer – but that would mean a very drastic cut in electrical output.

Dr. Maliha said that the choice that had been made – to operate the two turbines at partial load, with an output of about 45 MW – was both a compromise, and a contradiction. “The situation is inhuman, actually”, he said, “and we’ll run out of fuel very shortly”.

He said that even at the present reduced level of operation, the power plant has only enough fuel left for three days of operations – Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.

Both Israeli Defense Minister Barak and Israel’s Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Thursday night that they were determined to stop all Qassam attacks on Sderot.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) issued a statement Friday, in which it reminded “all parties to the conflict of their obligation to comply with international humanitarian law”. In particular, it said, “it urgently calls on them to ensure that the civilian population is protected”.

The ICRC statement expressed “its concern about the suffering of men, women and children taking no direct part in the ongoing conflict between Palestinian militants and the Israeli armed forces” – both in Israel and in the Gaza Strip.

Rocket attacks have “resulted in casualties among Israeli civilians, including young children”, the ICRC said. “At the same time, air strikes and incursions by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) inside the Gaza Strip have caused a high number of fatalities and injuries, including several civilians. The population of Gaza is paying a high price for the violence resulting from daily IDF operations, which have the effect of worsening the already harsh reality of life there”.

Gaza’s power plant has been operating two gas turbines at partial loads since 5 January, when its useable fuel reserves were exhausted. With this strategy, the plant has been able to generate about 45 MW a day.

But, to do so, the power plant relies on Gaza’s distribution company to manage the loads. The distribution company’s technicians are doing this manually, a procedure which normally should happen only infrequently, yet in the present circumstances in Gaza it is happening several times a day. The procedure is both difficult and dangerous, and there is no way to monitor the overall situation.

Gaza’s residents have reported very long and unpredictable electricity outages, far longer than the 8-hour black-outs that had been foreseen. It has been dark, and it has been cold in Gaza: the minimum temperatures as recorded at the Gaza power plant fell to -1.3 degrees Centigrade on Monday, and -1.8 degrees centigrade on Tuesday.

Without resupply, Dr. Maliha said, the plant will have to make a further cut, and shut down one of the two turbines now operating. This will mean a maximum output of only 25 to 30 MW of electricity on Sunday. And, by the end of the day Sunday, the plant will have to shut down completely, he said, almost in a whisper.

The fuel reserves at the plant were consumed to make up the daily shortfall, while running two turbines at full load, producing about 65 MW a day, following the Phase I fuel cuts imposed by the Israeli military on 28 October.

Filed under: Gaza, Israel, Middle East Peace Process, Palestine & Palestinians