Iraq Denies Saudi Power Agreement

Musab Sari al-Mudaris, the spokesman for Iraq's Ministry of Electricity, has denied reports that he had told Bloomberg about an agreement to buy electricity from Saudi Arabia. He said the statement from the news agency is incorrect, Iraq Business News reported. Bloomberg had cited Mudaris as saying that Saudi Arabia has agreed to build a 3,000-megawatt solar power plant in Saudi Arabia and sell the electricity to Iraq at $21 per megawatt-hour, a quarter of what it paid Iran for the imports. Iraq halted the purchase of electricity from Iran in July, exacerbating a gap between the supply of electricity and consumption that has resulted in rolling power cuts. Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi suspended Electricity Minister Qassim Fahdawi last week while the government investigates why the power service is poor. Two weeks ago, Iraq formed a committee to devise plans for addressing protesters’ concerns and allocated 3.5 trillion dinars ($3 billion) to support services that would address the contentious issues.