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 could power from one million to 1.5 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.
Dana Gas on Friday confirmed it was to shut its Khor Mor production facilities in the Kurdistan region because of "credible security threats". The company also blamed the "escalation in the region" for the move, in a statement to the Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange, where its shares trade.
"Ongoing monitoring of the situation is continuing, in co-operation with local authorities in Sulymaniya and the KRG [Kurdistan Regional Government], as well as the government of Iraq," it added.
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.
