Turkey’s energy company takes electricity to Jarablus after four-year blackout

Merve Erdil - ISTANBUL

EnerjiSA, a joint venture between Turkey’s Sabancı and Germany’s E.ON, has brought electricity services to residents of Jarablus in northern Syria for the first time in four years, in cooperation with the Turkish Energy Ministry. 

EnerjiSA CEO Kıvanç Zaimler said many company employees were already in Jarablus when the first service was offered during the Eid al-Adha holiday in September. 

“It was great for all of us to see how children cheered up when they saw electricity again,” Zaimler said, adding that the service was secured for around 1.2 million Turkish Liras ($400,000). 

He also noted that a similar system could be used to give electricity services to other parts of Syria.

“When the ministry first voiced its demand to take electricity to Jarablus, we created a solution. Our teams created a comprehensive investment project over a four-month period and we completed the project in just one week, thanks to our distribution teams’ highly devoted work,” Zaimler added.

Specially-designed transformers were carried from Istanbul to achieve the transformation of electricity’s flow to Syria’s system. Electricity was given to more than 3,000 houses and other buildings in the city, as well as streets, as of Sept. 10, according to company representatives. 

While private Turkish companies provided over 2 billion kilowatts/hour of electricity to neighboring Syria over a 15-month period, Turkey stopped supplying electricity to the area in October 2012 as the civil war spread throughout the country.