Two electricity-generating ships from Türkiye and Qatar are heading to Syria to boost energy supplies hit by damage to infrastructure during Bashar Assad regime's rule, the state news agency said Tuesday.
More than 13 years of civil war hammered Syria's power stations and energy pipelines, leading to power outages that can drag on for more than 20 hours a day.
The two ships would provide a total of 800 megawatts of electricity, around half of the current total output, Khaled Abu Dai, director-general of the national electricity company, told Syrian News Agency (SANA) on Tuesday.
"Work is ongoing to secure power lines to transport the electricity from the docking location of the two ships," Abu Dai said, without stating where that would be.
"The extent of damage to the generation and transformation stations and electrical connection lines during the period of the former regime is very large; we are seeking to rehabilitate (them) in order to transmit energy," he added.
He did not say when Syria would receive the two ships. The type of power plants involved and who is to finance it also remained unclear.
The announcement came a day after the United States issued a sanctions exemption for transactions with governing institutions in Syria for six months after the end of Assad's rule to try to increase the flow of humanitarian assistance.
The exemption allows some energy transactions and personal remittances to Syria until July 7. The action did not remove any sanctions.
The transitional government in Damascus has been lobbying to have sanctions lifted.
Both Qatar and Türkiye, which backed the anti-Assad opposition, reopened their embassies in Damascus in the aftermath of Assad's flight to Moscow.
Türkiye has been home to nearly 3 million refugees who fled Syria after the start of the civil war in 2011, and Assad's overthrow has raised hopes that many will go back.
More than 25,000 returned home since the fall of the regime, according to authorities.
A delegation from Türkiye's Energy and Natural Resources Ministry visited the Syrian capital in late December.
Separately, Karpowership, one of the world's largest operators of floating power plants, said late last month the Turkish company was one of the multiple alternatives being evaluated for providing electricity to Syria.
Energy and Natural Resources Minister Alparslan Bayraktar has said Türkiye is ready to export electricity to Syria.
Türkiye currently provides about 210 megawatts of electricity to some parts of northern Syria that it cleared from terrorists through four military operations since 2016.
Syria's needs could be initially "met by exporting it from Türkiye," according to Bayraktar. But that will become clearer after the assessment of the nation's transmission network.
Syria's civil war has killed more than half a million people and ravaged the economy of the country, which suffers from severe power shortages, with state-supplied electricity available just two or three hours a day in most areas.
The caretaker government says it aims within two months to provide electricity for up to eight hours a day.
Jordan also said last week it was ready to supply parts of Syria with electricity.
"The Jordanian side is currently preparing the necessary infrastructure to supply the Nassib border crossing with its electricity needs based on the Syrian side's request," Energy and Mineral Resources Minister Saleh al-Kharabsheh said on Friday.
