Winter Approaches with 'Mazut Burning'; $6 Billion Loss from Power Outages in Summer

As winter approaches, Iranian media reported the likelihood of a gas supply crisis and 'mazut burning' in industries, announcing that the loss from power outages in industries during the summer amounted to $6 billion. The Tehran-based newspaper 'Donya-e-Eqtesad' quoted the Vice President of the Energy Commission of the Iran Chamber of Commerce, stating that 'this summer we experienced a power imbalance of 10 to 12 thousand megawatts and outages' and that 'we will also witness outages in winter due to high gas consumption and its shortage.' Hamidreza Salehi attributed the main cause of these events to a lack of investment, emphasizing that the outages in the industrial sector this summer resulted in 'about $5 to $6 billion reduction in the country's GDP, and this is a calculated figure.' Salehi stressed that 'with the onset of winter, we should expect mazut burning,' stating that the gas shortage has caused outages in power plants, leading to a shift towards mazut burning. Morteza Eslamzadeh, head of the industrial parks working group at the Iran Chamber of Commerce, also noted in an interview that power outages have increased losses for industrial units, indicating that the conditions for active production units in industrial parks in Tehran have 'worsened compared to last year.' On July 22, the newspaper Ham-Mihan quoted a steel producer stating that for every 24 hours of production stoppage, 'nearly 10 billion tomans' in losses are incurred by his company. Ali Akbar Alvandian, secretary of the Cement Employers Association, considered the losses in this industry to be double that of other industries, stating that the different production process in the cement industry causes a two-day factory shutdown for every day of power outage. Experts have indicated that power outages in summer have caused an average annual loss of $6 to $7 billion to Iranian industries in recent years. In this context, Ali Rasoulian, head of the Small Industries and Industrial Parks Organization of Iran, previously announced the heavy losses from power outages to industries in 2021 to be seven billion dollars. Meanwhile, the news agency ISNA, referring to consumption levels and the annual increase in electricity demand in Iran, stated that the industry requires an annual investment of $5 billion to create 'balance and equilibrium between production and consumption.' While over the past two decades, the Islamic Republic has focused significant resources on 'nuclear energy production' and its media continues to speak of 'clean and cheap' nuclear electricity, experts have stated that currently, the share of nuclear and renewable power plants in Iran's electricity production is only 5%.