Iraq electricity minister pledges to resolve power crisis within 15 days

BAGHDAD, Iraq — Iraq's parliament hosted Electricity Minister Ali Vaheb on Saturday for its seventh session, where he pledged to resolve the country's persistent power crisis within 15 days, according to parliamentary sources. The minister told lawmakers that electricity output and supply conditions would be stabilized in that period. Badr Organization lawmaker Jaafar al-Jamili said Vaheb outlined plans to increase gas deliveries to power plants under Iraq's agreement with Iran, a key fuel source for the country's generation capacity. Al-Jamili also said a planned visit to Turkey would address the possibility of importing additional electricity from Turkish suppliers. The ministry said it was working to resume gas deliveries to power plants from the Kurdistan Region after a period of disruption, and that 9,000 megawatts of capacity would be reintegrated into the national grid. Officials attributed the nationwide outages to declining gas supply and widespread network losses, including illegal connections and technical leaks across the transmission system.