Iran Press/ Iran News: Iraqi Minister of Electricity Adel Karim had previously traveled to Iran at the head of a delegation to discuss the gas exports to Iraqi power plants and the "payment of debts" to Iran's electricity and oil sector.
Speaking to IRNA, Yahya al-Es'haq, Head of the Iran-Iraq Joint Chamber of Commerce, said that arrangements had been made for Iraq to pay its debts.
According to al-Es'haq, Iraq owes a total of $ 10 billion to Iran's private and public sectors ( $1B. to the public and $9B to the private sector) to be paid. A new agreement with Iran to supply Iraq with gas for electricity generation has been threatened by a Federal Supreme Court ruling limiting the caretaker Iraqi government’s spending power, Electricity Minister Adel Karim has said recently.
"If the Iraqi government cannot pay Iran for what it supplies under the new deal, I don't know, maybe they [Iran] will cut the gas, and we would lose around 8,000 MW," the minister said in an interview in his Baghdad office with Iraq Oil Report this week.
Karim visited Tehran last month and reached an agreement with Iranian officials over future gas imports, as well as debt repayments of more than $1.5 billion, aiming to guarantee better power generation before demand peaks in the summer.
The agreement involves Iran increasing gas exports to Iraq to 50 million cubic meters a day, which would help to boost power supply and meet the Electricity Ministry’s peak supply target of 24,000 to 25,000 MW.
But Iraq’s ability to pay for the gas – long hampered by U.S. sanctions on Tehran – is threatened by the Federal Supreme Court in Baghdad, which on Sunday issued a ruling limiting the current caretaker government’s powers. That prevented the passage of an “Emergency Food Security and Energy Law” to govern stop-gap spending in the absence of a 2022 budget. According to Karim, the law would have allowed Iraq to pay its debts, and its absence leaves the Electricity Ministry unable to make the payments that it has just promised to Tehran.
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