Iraq said Friday that a power line would soon bring electricity from Jordan to the border area as authorities aim to diversify energy sources to ease the country's chronic outages.
With its generating capacity ravaged by decades of conflict and underinvestment, Iraq has long relied on imports of gas and electricity from neighboring Iran.
The 340-kilometer (210-mile) power line from Jordan will officially start operating on Saturday, the Electricity Ministry said in a statement.
In a first phase, it will provide 40 megawatts of power to the Al-Rutbah area near the border. Its capacity will then be boosted to 150 MW and finally 500 MW to cover "several large parts" of Anbar province, west of Baghdad.
Despite its vast oil reserves, Iraq suffers rolling power cuts that can last up to 10 hours a day, forcing those households that can afford it to subscribe to neighborhood generators as a backup.
Iraq's imports from Iran are carefully monitored by the United States to make sure they do not breach U.S. sanctions on Tehran, which regularly cuts supply to punish nonpayment.
Power outages are particularly severe in the summer, when temperatures regularly hit 50 degrees Celsius (122 Fahrenheit) and demand for refrigeration and air conditioning surges.
