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The story is long and certainly did not begin with the arrival of the MT Baltic ship to Lebanon last March. However, what opened the door for the judiciary to enter the archive is that ship that turned out to be loaded with “oil waste”, despite obtaining a patent instrument from the oil facilities and the General Directorate of Petroleum in the Ministry of Energy confirming that it meets the specifications.
The question of required fuel specifications is not a fixed day. For example, before 2013, the Ministry of Energy did not stipulate that fuel specifications must comply with ISO 8217. However, the matter changed on the day of the contract with Cardinis. At that time, it became clear that the approved fuel was not suitable for reverse engines, and could cause serious damage, and the same includes the new Al-Zouk and Jiyyah factories, which operate on the engines themselves. Fuel has arrived in Lebanon according to two types of specifications. The first is in conformity with “ISO” specifications and the second is of the lowest quality used to power the two old thermal plants in Zouk and Jiyeh. Regarding the fuel that is brought to operate the new ships and the new factories of Al-Zouk and Al-Jiyyah, it is not enough that the controls carried out in the laboratories of the oil facilities are supervised by one of the monitoring companies. assigned by the General Directorate of Petroleum. The mechanism is as follows: the fuel-laden ship reaches the Lebanese coast, and the Petroleum Directorate takes a sample to examine it. If it is confirmed to meet the specifications, the load is discharged into Lebanon’s electricity tanks. Specifically at this point, during the unloading process, both Karadeniz and MEP begin to obtain their own sample, falling throughout the emptying period. After that, each company you designate ships to Bureau Veritas in Dubai, and does not use fuel unless it is verified that it meets the required specifications. It is customary here to use fuel, even if your specifications do not completely match. But then it will require more difficult procedures on the part of the two companies involved, related to the treatment of fuel as much as possible through special filters. In this case, it is known in the sector that ships are superior to onshore laboratories in their ability to treat fuel (due to the nature of their work and the possibility of transmission from one country to another and the use of the type fuel to another). For example, the MEP opposed one of the shipments that arrived in Lebanon in July, refusing to use it due to increased acidity, but Karadeniz used it, after it was able to process it, but had to reduce its production capacity. For the occasion, this shipment remains a matter of dispute between EDL and the operator. Electricity of Lebanon confirms that the shipment was in accordance with the specifications stipulated in the contract, and the company considers that it is not usable.
According to MEP director Yahya Mouloud, four shipments have been rejected to date. First, in the first month of 2019, and they did not meet all the required specifications, and the second in July, and contained banned and unstable chemicals that allowed to change the properties of the fuel, and the third last shipment last March in which the proportion of oil deposits reached 4.26, while it is assumed that More than 0.1 (tests carried out by the oil facilities confirmed that they were in accordance with the specifications before they were found to be inconsistent). The last charges rejected are those assigned to the (old) thermoelectric factories, and the Energy Ministry announced its rejection due to the difference in density.
It is noteworthy that despite Sonatrach’s announcement of its agreement to recover the adulterated shipment (March), this shipment remains to this day in the two main tanks (25,000 tons per tank capacity) at the EDL, causing a decrease in the storage capacity of the institution. Therefore, it was unable to download the shipment that followed, which turned out to be in compliance with the specifications, so it had to use replacement tanks used by MEP, and is still using these tanks. This causes shipments to be unloaded in stages and with a delay of approximately five days. Fill the two tanks (22 thousand tons, Al-Zouk and 11 thousand in Jiyeh), then wait while part of the stock is consumed to fill the two tanks. It did not stop there. After it was discovered that the shipment assigned to the former workers was also not identical, the ability to provide all the workers with fuel in need decreased, so work stopped at two of the three production groups in Zouk, and in two of the five groups in Jiyeh. Therefore, Lebanon Electricity was forced to operate the backup factories in Tire and Baalbek.
All this indicates a fundamental defect, if it is not in the contract with Sonatrach, in its implementation. The defect here is not only related to the legal violations that opened the investigation, but also to technical damages. This requires urgent investigation into radical solutions, either to conclude the company’s change (its contract expires at the end of the year), in exchange for conducting an actual tender to secure the fuel or signing a contract that is truly state-to-state. , with a state that produces the fuel that Lebanon needs, not as it happens. With Algeria, it does not produce this type of fuel. The first effective step to end this situation was through the discovery of new contracts by Energy Minister Raymond Ghajar.
It should be noted that Lebanon did not contract directly with the Algerian national company, but with the company “Sonatrach Petroleum BVI”, which is a company registered in the British Virgin Islands (one of the world’s tax havens), owned by the Sonatrach Holding Group. This company is engaged in the trade of oil and gas derivatives and maritime transport. And so, all it does is buy the fuel from multiple sources and then sell it to Lebanon, through the ZR energie company or the Al-Basateenah company.
