Government negligence keeps Aden at the mercy of purchased energy
English - Thursday 26 May 2022 الساعة 03:30 pm
Aden, NewsYemen, special:
The private electricity generation and production companies in the capital, Aden, "rented energy", threatened to stop the work of their generators under the pretext of not paying their dues for two years.
In a joint memorandum addressed to the Minister of Electricity and Energy on Wednesday, these companies gave the government until next Monday, May 30 to pay its overdue financial dues, threatening to stop the work of its generator
The three companies accused the Ministry of Finance and the Central Bank of procrastinating in the payment of the overdue financial benefits that have been accumulating for more than two years, demanding the speedy payment of their dues until April 2022 with the signing of the extension of contracts that ended in October 2021, according to the letter.
These companies had previously threatened to stop their generation in January and last March, before they retracted this after the intervention of the governor of Aden and promises from the prime minister to pay their dues.
According to informed sources, the purchased energy companies are demanding about $60 million in receivables during the two years from April 2020 to April 2022.
The sources pointed out that the implementation by these companies of their threat to stop the generators will double the size of the electricity crisis in the city of Aden, which has been witnessing for days an unprecedented rise in temperatures at this time of the year.
The rise in temperatures led to a jump in the loads of the city of Aden, which exceeded 600 megawatts compared to generating no more than 280 megawatts only, which raised the number of hours of extinguishing to 4 hours compared to only two hours of operation.
According to the sources, stopping the energy companies purchased for their generators will mean about 100 megawatts being out of service, which would represent a disaster for the people of Aden by raising the number of firefighting hours to 6-7 hours and reducing operating hours to between an hour and an hour and a half.
This comes after official accusations made by the Director of the Media Office of Aden Electricity, Nawar Abkar, to the government of ignoring the solutions provided by Aden Electricity to the concerned authorities last November to confront the summer of 2022.
In a series of posts on his official page on Facebook, Abkar explained that among these solutions is the speedy completion of the project to drain the energy produced for the Petromasila plant to bring it into service with its full power of 264 megawatts, in addition to repairing the Qatari gas station, which has a capacity of 50 megawatts.
Abkar revealed that the completion of the energy drainage project needs only $20 million, while the cost of maintaining the Qatari station ranges between eight to ten million dollars.
Pointing out that the government's inability to pay these amounts comes at a time when it is seeking to lease a floating ship with a capacity of 100 megawatts, at a value of more than $130 million, for a period of three years.
The assertion by the Director of the Media Office of Aden Electricity that the government is seeking to lease the floating ship contradicts Prime Minister Maeen Abdulmalik’s assertion before the House of Representatives last April that the government took a decision to stop any new contract for energy purchased with liquid fuels, specifically diesel.
