{"id":58998,"date":"2021-08-14T07:01:54","date_gmt":"2021-08-14T12:01:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=58998"},"modified":"2021-08-14T07:01:54","modified_gmt":"2021-08-14T12:01:54","slug":"beirut-goes-dark-as-economic-tailspin-sees-dire-fuel-electricity-shortages","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=58998","title":{"rendered":"Beirut Goes Dark As Economic Tailspin Sees Dire Fuel &#038; Electricity Shortages\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"<header class=\"ArticleFull_header__11o5_\">\n<h3 class=\"ArticleFull_title__2cUI6\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.zerohedge.com\/economics\/beirut-goes-dark-economic-tailspin-sees-dire-fuel-electricity-shortages\">Beirut Goes Dark As Economic Tailspin Sees Dire Fuel &amp; Electricity Shortages\u00a0<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/header>\n<div class=\"NodeContent_mainContent__38L44\">\n<div class=\"NodeContent_body__2clki NodeBody_container__1M6aJ\">\n<p>Starting Wednesday night Lebanon&#8217;s Central Bank announced that\u00a0<strong>fuel subsidies have been halted<\/strong>, already at a moment where there&#8217;s been scarcity of both gas and electricity. Fuel prices are expected to\u00a0<strong>at least quadruple<\/strong>, leading to a national scramble for fuel,<strong>\u00a0<\/strong>exacerbating\u00a0rolling blackouts akin to what&#8217;s become the tragic &#8220;norm&#8221; of recent\u00a0years in neighboring war-torn Syrian.<\/p>\n<p data-act-id=\"paragraph_0\" data-paragraph-id=\"paragraph_D0747351-14C7-B9C4-11A7-3ADC04FD7ED9\">International reports are underscoring that the enduring economic crisis beginning in 2019\u00a0which sparked a year of\u00a0mass protests and a currency crisis, and subsequent failed attempts to stave off total collapse amid a\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.zerohedge.com\/markets\/we-need-shock-pm-hariri-resigns-lebanons-sovereign-dollar-bonds-plunge\">drastic &#8220;shock&#8221; change in government<\/a>,\u00a0are\u00a0now coming to a head, sending already impoverished areas of the country of nearly seven million spiraling into steadily worsened conditions.<\/p>\n<div class=\"twitter-tweet twitter-tweet-rendered\"><iframe id=\"twitter-widget-0\" class=\"\" title=\"Twitter Tweet\" src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/embed\/Tweet.html?dnt=false&amp;embedId=twitter-widget-0&amp;features=eyJ0ZndfZXhwZXJpbWVudHNfY29va2llX2V4cGlyYXRpb24iOnsiYnVja2V0IjoxMjA5NjAwLCJ2ZXJzaW9uIjpudWxsfSwidGZ3X2hvcml6b25fdHdlZXRfZW1iZWRfOTU1NSI6eyJidWNrZXQiOiJodGUiLCJ2ZXJzaW9uIjpudWxsfSwidGZ3X3NwYWNlX2NhcmQiOnsiYnVja2V0Ijoib2ZmIiwidmVyc2lvbiI6bnVsbH19&amp;frame=false&amp;hideCard=false&amp;hideThread=false&amp;id=1425857546607280132&amp;lang=en&amp;origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Feconomics%2Fbeirut-goes-dark-economic-tailspin-sees-dire-fuel-electricity-shortages&amp;sessionId=cf4065ec72678308cfa530bb315c7c74393d90ce&amp;siteScreenName=zerohedge&amp;theme=light&amp;widgetsVersion=1890d59c%3A1627936082797&amp;width=550px\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\" data-tweet-id=\"1425857546607280132\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p>Regional director of humanitarian aid NGO Crisis Group,\u00a0Heiko Wimmen, was\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2021\/08\/12\/middleeast\/lebanon-fuel-subsidies-electricity-intl\/index.html\">cited in CNN<\/a>\u00a0as saying &#8220;This is obviously going to ripple through the whole economy.&#8221; He emphasized that seemingly overnight basic staples that support daily life have now become a &#8220;luxury&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p><strong>&#8220;For a large part of the population, electricity will become a luxury. Driving your car will become a luxury, too. Transportation will become a luxury,&#8221;<\/strong>\u00a0Wimmen added.<\/p>\n<p>The cutting of subsidies was expected, but still a &#8220;shock&#8221; nonetheless. Like everything else in Lebanon energy has been severely mismanaged, after<strong>\u00a0already the government suspended lines of credit to fuel importers<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"caption caption-img inline-images image-style-inline-images\" role=\"group\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/assets.zerohedge.com\/s3fs-public\/styles\/inline_image_mobile\/public\/inline-images\/libanelectr.jpg?itok=P1Q1km75\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"332\" data-entity-type=\"file\" data-entity-uuid=\"432266ab-a8db-478b-ae6b-ee0eb6b0b505\" data-responsive-image-style=\"inline_images\" \/><figcaption><em>AFP<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>So the sudden\u00a0liberalization of fuel prices meant whole villages, towns, and parts of cities were plunged into darkness overnight as not even generators\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2021\/08\/12\/middleeast\/lebanon-fuel-subsidies-electricity-intl\/index.html\">could keep the lights on<\/a>:<\/p>\n<p>\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Beirut Goes Dark As Economic Tailspin Sees Dire Fuel &amp; Electricity Shortages\u00a0 Starting Wednesday night Lebanon&#8217;s Central Bank announced that\u00a0fuel subsidies have been halted, already at a moment where there&#8217;s been scarcity of both gas and electricity. Fuel prices are expected to\u00a0at least quadruple, leading to a national scramble for fuel,\u00a0exacerbating\u00a0rolling blackouts akin to what&#8217;s [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[18664,15792,4721,3042,1575,4318],"class_list":["post-58998","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy-2","tag-beirut","tag-fuel-shortages","tag-grid-loss","tag-lebanon","tag-power-loss","tag-zerohedge"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58998","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=58998"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58998\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59005,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58998\/revisions\/59005"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=58998"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=58998"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=58998"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}