Remote Tunisian areas face natural gas shortages amid cold snap

TUNIS (AFP): A long queue stretches outside a small natural gas depot in Tunisia’s northwestern town of Beja, as vendors across the country face growing pressure amid widespread shortages, worsened by unusually cold weather.

Tunisians living in remote regions say they have gone days without natural gas, essential for keeping warm and cooking, as a result of shipping delays due to bad weather, according to reports.

“The situation is becoming very frustrating,” said Alaa Hammami, a natural gas distributor in Goubellat, some 50 kilometers (30 miles) from Beja.

“People are calling constantly for gas, but there’s none available,” he added. “From the moment I wake up until I go to bed, my phone doesn’t stop ringing.”

Only about a third of Tunisian populated areas are connected to natural gas lines, most of them major cities.

This leaves rural and underserved areas reliant on gas cylinders, making them vulnerable to disruptions.

The abrupt spell of cold weather has “led to an increase in consumption” in those areas, said Mounir Riahi, a vendor in Beja.

“Normally, between December and January, I sell up to 4,000 gas cylinders a day,” he said. “For over a week, we’ve only received some 1,200 cylinders a day, and then that dropped to 800.”

While the “severe shortage” also delt Riahi’s business a blow, it has forced families to resort to firewood instead, which is even more difficult to source.

Similar queues of people waiting to buy natural gas cylinders have been reported in other remote regions like Jendouba and Kairouan.

Brahim Ziouziou, vice-president of the Tunisian National Chamber of Gas Cylinder Distributors, said the crisis stemmed from “a delayed ship that was due to arrive a few days ago.”

He said up to 200,000 gas cylinders were needed to meet national demand.

“This should be achievable within a week, at which point we can return to our normal pace,” he said.

Three ships loaded with liquefied natural gas are expected to arrive in Tunisia in the coming days, the state-owned oil distribution company Agil recently said.

Over 17 percent of the Tunisian population lives in poverty, amid persistent inequalities between coastal and interior regions.

In recent years, the country has also seen shortages of basic goods like milk, sugar and flour, many of which are state-subsidized.