Iraq's Ministry of Electricity has warned the country might lose up to 1,400 megawatts of power after the UAE's Dana Gas shut down operations in the Kurdistan region's Khor Mor gasfield due to “credible security threats”.
The government, however, has enacted emergency measures to maintain a stable supply to Iraq's national power grid, ministry spokesman Ahmed Turki Ghiyad said in a statement on Facebook on Thursday.
Industry estimates show that a capacity of 1,400MW would be enough to power anywhere between one million and two million homes or large-scale industrial operations. The Khor Mor gasfield is estimated to have a production capacity of about 750 million standard cubic feet per day.
Earlier, media reports quoting company officials said Dana Gas had halted operations at its main production hubs at the Khor Mor gasfield due to threats from regional hostilities. It did not specify the threats.
The company established the Kurdistan gas project in 2007. Production from the Khor Mor gas processing plant and the 180km pipeline supplies gas to power stations in Chemchemal, Bazian and Erbil, generating over 2,000MW of electricity, according to its website.
Iraq, as with other countries in the Gulf, has been caught up in the war between the US and Iran, with the latter targeting key infrastructure, particularly energy facilities in the Kurdistan Region.
