Iraq's electricity minister tells GE to deliver 10,000 MW from region by 2027

BAGHDAD, Iraq — Iraq's Electricity Minister has set a condition for a new contract with U.S. company General Electric requiring it to supply 10,000 megawatts of electricity from the region by 2027, a parliamentary committee member said on Saturday. Riyad Aday, a member of the Iraqi Parliament's Electricity and Energy Committee, said the minister outlined the demand during a committee briefing on the country's declining power supply. Aday added that contracts and agreements with GE have been in place since 2008 but have not produced concrete results on the ground, and that the minister's recent visit to the United States and the new contract differ from previous arrangements. Speaking at the same session, Electricity Minister Ali Sadri Wahab said completing electricity interconnection projects with neighboring countries and reducing losses in the grid would boost generation and shorten outage hours. He did not provide a timeline for implementation. General Electric has said since 2023 that it has advanced plans in Iraq for power generation from flare gas, announcing that up to 10,000 megawatts could be produced if all flared gas in the country were utilized through mobile turbine unit technology. No further details on the new contract were immediately available.