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Syria Electric Power
At independence, only a small part of the population in the
larger urban centers had access to electricity, and per capita
consumption ranked among the lowest in the world. Small separate,
local companies owned by private domestic or foreign interests
supplied electricity. During the 1950s, capacity increased, and
production expanded by an average of 12.4 percent a year. Rapid
expansion continued, and during the 1960s, the state began a
national grid. In 1976 electric power generation amounted to
1,732 million kilowatt hours (KWH), an average annual increase of
over 14 percent since 1966.
According to the Ministry of Electricity, electricity
production rose from 3,720 million KWH in 1980 to 7,310 million
KWH in 1984 and 7,589 million KWH in 1985. Annual production
growth, however, fell from an average of 19 percent in 1980 to
only 10 percent in 1984 and 1985. By 1986 electricity consumption
outstripped production, forcing power cutbacks of four hours a
day throughout the country. Industry consumed 52 percent of total
electricy in 1984, but some factories reported operational
capacity of only 60 percent because of power shortages. In May
1986, the People's Assembly debated the electricity crisis,
urging renewed efforts to ration electricity consumption and to
devise new projects to increase power generation and
distribution. Although the electric-power industry was one of the
fastest growing sectors of the economy in the 1960s and 1970s
(Syria even exported electricity to Lebanon and Jordan in the
late 1970s), the state's success in providing electricity to ever
greater numbers of the population in a remarkably short time
paradoxically precipitated the crisis.
Although the state nationalized electric power generation in
1951, the industry remained fragmented under local administration
until a single national company emerged in 1965. In 1974 when the
state created the Ministry of Electricity to supervise the
development of the electric-power supply, the national electrical
company became an agency of the ministry. By 1976 nearly all of
the country's generating units were under the national electrical
company and linked in a grid. At the end of 1984, the national
system had an installed capacity of 2,834 megawatts compared with
1,779 megawatts in 1976. However, the 1980s witnessed a shocking
and somewhat unanticipated decline in hydroelectric power
production, the dominant source in the state's plan to increase
electricity output. In 1979 hydroelectric power generated 73
percent of the country's electricity, up from 55.6 percent in
1975. Hydroelectric power accounted for 59 percent of installed
nominal capacity in 1979. But by 1984 hydroelectric capacity
produced only 820 megawatts (29 percent of total megawatts) and
1,928 million KWH of electricity or 26 percent of the total.
Thermal capacity generated 2,014 megawatts, 71 percent of the
total produced in 1984, and produced 5,382 million KWH of
electricity, or 74 percent of the total.
The precipitous decline of hydroelectric-power generation
resulted from technical and operational problems inherent in the
Euphrates dam. In the mid-1980s, the dam's eight 100-megawatt
turbines operated below capacity, often producing only one-third
of projected output. The low level of water in Lake Assad, caused
by poor rainfall and Turkey's use of the Euphrates waters for its
Keban and Attaturk dams, also contributed to the difficulties.
Although the Euphrates dam was the most important component in
the state's plan to expand the national power system in the late
1960s and 1970s, it failed to produce the expected 80 percent of
the country's electric power between 1977 and the early 1980s.
In the early 1980s, Syria implemented few new projects to
meet the growing demand for energy, but it planned extensions of
existing power stations to expand production and new projects for
the end of the decade. The Baniyas station, completed in 1981 for
US$140 million, anticipated a 2-turbine, 165-megawatt extension
in the late 1980s. The Suwaydiyah power station also expected to
benefit from a 150-megawatt extension and 4 new turbines. At the
Muhradah power station, located west of Hamah and completed in
1979, a major extension totalling US$195 million and financed
largely by Gulf development agencies was planned. The US$97
million Soviet-assisted Tishrin power plant (formerly known as
Widan ar Rabih station) and another power station near Homs were
under construction in the mid-1980s.
In addition, the government considered constructing a nuclear
power plant with Soviet assistance. In mid-1983 Syria signed a
protocol with the Soviet Union to conduct feasibility studies and
select an appropriate location for the country's first reactor.
Although Syrian and Soviet officials had originally intended that
a 1,200-megawatt nuclear plant come on line in 1990, the project
had advanced little beyond the design stage by the mid-1980s.
Although nuclear energy promised a solution to Syria's pressing
electricity shortage, the political and military obstacles to
Syria's developing nuclear energy were formidable, especially in
the wake of Israel's bombing of Iraq's nuclear reactor in 1981.
As nuclear power became a more costly alternative energy source
in the context of volatile Middle East politics, in the late
1980s the government explored the prospects for solar energy.
By 1978 a national grid linked nearly all of the country's
generating units and most of the larger towns; distribution
extended to rural areas only in the west around such major cities
as Damascus and Aleppo. In 1970, based on a housing census, about
85 percent of the urban population had access to electricity but
only about 10 percent of the rural population did. According to
government statistics, 40 percent of the population remained
without electricity in 1980. However, by the middle of the
decade, almost all of the urban population had received
electricity. Rural electrification projects, a top priority of
the Ministry of Electricity in the 1970s, had also achieved
widespread success. The government planned extending electricity
to all villages with over 100 inhabitants by 1990. The number of
villages receiving electricity grew from 424 prior to 1975 to
1,581 in 1979 and had reached 5,894 in 1984. In Ar Raqqah
Province alone the number of electrified villages increased from
47 in the period from 1953 to 1979 to 405 in 1984, indicating the
dramatic extension of electricity to rural areas. The number of
subscribers in rural areas tripled between 1970 and 1984,
increasing from 442,307 to 1,564,625.
Expanding electric power distribution and usage in the 1970s,
sectoral mismanagement, lack of spare parts for power plants,
technical impediments, and declining water levels in Lake Assad
produced a mid-1980s electricity crisis. Syrian official
statistics and Ministry of Electricity data projected that
consumption, growing at an annual rate of 20 to 22 percent in the
mid-1980s, would outstrip production until the mid-1990s. Syria
could meet the surging demand for electricity in the mid-1980s
only by producing 300 to 400 additional megawatts a year.
However, with only one 25-megawatt unit at the Baath Dam
scheduled to come on line in late 1986, ambiguous plans for 1987,
a 320-megawatt increase projected for 1988, and a 400-megawatt
increase expected when the Tishrin station began production in
1989, Ministry of Electricity plans fell far short of satisfying
demand. The ministry's plans for the 1989-95 period projected a
production increase to 2,970 megawatts to meet an anticipated
demand ranging from 1,800 to 2,400 megawatts. The theoretical
excess production, however, would barely meet the accumulated
shortages of the mid-1980s. Electricity shortages, blackouts,
power cuts, and rationing remained a prominent feature of Syrian
life in the late 1980s, frustrating industrial development and
impeding economic growth.
Data as of April 1987
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