BASRA, Iraq – Glistening in Iraq’s barren southern salt plains, a natural gas-driven power station has come on line, generating sorely needed electricity for war-weary Iraqis and demonstrating that much-maligned U.S.-led reconstruction efforts are beginning to bear fruit.
U.S. officials said Sunday that increasing Iraq’s electricity generating capacity through facilities such as the 250-megawatt electricity plant near the southern city of Basra is crucial to American efforts to encourage Iraqis to turn their backs on the insurgency.
Among the most infuriating problems for Iraqis nearly three years after the U.S.-led invasion remains the lack of regular electricity to run lights and home appliances, including air conditioners during Iraq’s summer, when temperatures soar beyond 120 degrees.
Daniel Speckhard, who heads the U.S. reconstruction effort here, said Iraqis had expected instant results after the toppling of Saddam Hussein’s regime, which had allow the country’s electricity-generating plants and national grid to deteriorate.
“They were hoping instantly to have the same kind of things we have in the United States, where you have 24 hours of power,” Speckhard said. “What we are looking for by this coming summer is to get so the whole nation has roughly 12 hours of power, which is significantly better than where we have been.”
Of 425 electricity-related projects, only 300 are expected to be completed before the $18.6 billion approved by Congress in November 2003 for reconstruction in Iraq runs out, U.S. officials have said.
Baghdad is among the country’s worst-off areas with most streets unlit at night and many of the capital’s 7 million people relying on generators.
Iraqis living in Basra, the country’s second-largest city, 340 miles southeast of Baghdad, have an average of 12 hours a day of power already, up from much lower prewar levels, as a result of the new plant.
The United States spent $123 million to install two 125-megawatt gas-generated turbines that were bought before the war under the U.N. Oil for Food program. The turbines began operating in late December at the site of a rusting Hussein-era power plant in Khor Az Zubayr, 20 miles south of Basra.
The plant is estimated to add electric power equivalent for what is needed for more than 220,000 households.
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