Lights going out in Gaza again

The Gaza Energy Authority says the Gaza Strip’s only power plant will stop functioning once again if fuel is not received immediately.

In a statement issued on Saturday afternoon, the Energy Authority said that one generator had already been shut down and the remaining amount of fuel was only sufficient to continue the plant’s electricity output for a few hours.

The power plant’s output decreased to 30 megawatts from more than 60 last week and Gaza will experience blackouts as a result of an energy deficit of 50 percent, the statement noted.

The announcement of an imminent power outage is the second in two weeks. On February 4, an emergency fuel delivery prevented blackouts. Two days later, a generator was shut down, but then restarted later in the week as some fuel arrived.

Gaza border checkpoints controlled by the Israelis are frequently shut, and Israeli courts have reduced the regular fuel quota entering the Gaza Strip for no given reason, the Energy Authority said. In the first week of February, 1,600 cubic meters of fuel entered instead of 2,200 cubic meters.

The Gaza Energy Authority has appealed once again to international and humanitarian organizations, as well as to Arab states and the Organization of the Islamic Conference, to make every effort to raise Gaza’s electricity generation capacity to the required level.