The direct material damage that has been inflicted upon Syrian electricity networks since protests broke out last year is nearly SYP 713m (USD 12.3m), Minister of Electricity Imad Khamis announced in a press conference on January 18. These losses have been attributed variously to damages caused during the uprising, as well as economic sanctions imposed by the US, EU and the Arab League.
“Currently Syria’s electricity production is 8,500 Megawatts (MW), and material losses due to armed attacks and power failures thus far amount to SYP 23bn (USD 397m)”, Khamis stated in the first official comprehensive report on the damages the ministry has suffered since March 2011. Pointing out the effects of EU sanctions on Syria, he explained that “these punishments definitely hurt the ordinary people.” The ministry estimates that an average of 1,000MW to 1,700MW, or between 20 and 25 percent of the country’s daily generation capacity, is currently not being produced.
For several weeks, Syrians have been experiencing daily power cuts, which last up to four hours a day in Damascus and up to seven hours in other parts of the country. “Studying by candlelight has become a regular activity,” Feras, a 21-year-old university student, told Syria Today. “The rising price of candles is our main concern now,” he added bitterly.
The demand for electricity has risen by 20 percent, even reaching 50 percent in some areas, according to ministry statistics. This is partly due to a rise in prices of heating oil and gas on the black market, which has caused a growing number of households to switch from gas and oil to electricity for their heating needs.
According to the minister of electricity, armed bandits are attacking the country’s electricity network by interrupting the supplies of fuel they need to produce power, blowing up railways and fuel tankers. “[Our supplies of] fuel, gas-oil, and natural gas are sufficient for running all our power stations. Currently, the only problem is transferring them to the power plants,” Khamis explained.  
On December 14, a blast targeted a fuel pipeline near Homs, which led to a partial suspension of production at the Zeyzoun and Zara power plants. “This explosion incapacitated production of 400 MW of power,” the minister said, pointing out that following this incident, daily power cuts across the country increased by an additional hour.
However, some experts say this shortfall is due to other, underlying factors, particularly a lack of infrastructure, aggravated by economic sanctions on the oil industry. Although a crude oil producer, Syria lacks enough refining capacity to meet domestic demand for oil products, manager of a private office for economic consultation and studies Hassan Ahmed told Syria Today. According to him, the shortfall between fuel supply and demand has grown as a result of EU sanctions which included a ban on dealing with Syria Trading Oil, or Sytrol, a company which handles imports of refined products.
However, Khamis, confirmed, “our contracts with neighbouring countries, including those with Turkey, are still in effect bilaterally. But in the near future, we will enter talks on multilateral electricity imports with some neighbouring countries.”
Syria’s international trade in electricity is linked by a regional power grid which includes Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, Libya, Iraq and Turkey. The Syrian government has invested some SYP 250bn (USD 4bn) in the energy sector over the past five years. On November 14, 2010, the government passed a law allowing foreign and private local investors to generate and distribute electricity. However, the law has yet to come into effect. Syria was ranked 92 out of 142 in terms of quality of electricity supply in the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report 2011-2012.
“Demand for electricity will double by 2025 and triple by 2030,” Ahmed said. He called for similar accurate reports to measure the damages suffered by various economic sectors during the unrest, concluding: “to survive the crisis, we need to determine its reasons and tally up the damage it caused.”