Iraq Starts Repaying $1b Power Debt

Iraq has made a $300-million payment to Iran under a power export agreement, according to Azeri news media Trend, quoting Iran’s Deputy Energy Minister Houshang Falahatian. Another $800 million remain to be paid. Iran was exporting some 1,500 megawatts of electricity to its neighbor as of November 2016, when Iraq defaulted on its payments. Plans were to increase exports to 2,000 MW. At the time, Falahatian said that Iraq owed Tehran money for over a year of power supplies, adding that ways of addressing the problem were being discussed, Oil Price reported. While the discussions lingered, Iran cut off power supply to its neighbor over the first two months of 2017, but in March started ramping up deliveries again. Official statistics from the Iranian Energy Ministry, cited by Trend, showed that overall electricity exports fell to 300 million kilowatts per hour over the last two months of the Iranian fiscal, down 78%, while imports rose by 6% to 789 million kWh.