Gas Pipeline Explosion Near Tishreen Plant Halts Three Power Stations in Syria

A fire broke out on Wednesday evening following an explosion in the gas pipeline supplying the Tishreen Thermal Power Plant in rural Damascus. Flames and plumes of smoke rose for hours, while the glow of the fire could be seen from areas in Eastern Ghouta and around the capital.

The incident has deepened the crisis facing Syria’s strained electricity sector. The disruption of fuel supplies forced three of the country’s major power plants offline simultaneously, causing the national grid’s generating capacity to plunge, sharply increasing scheduled power rationing hours and causing widespread outages stretching from the capital to the southern provinces.

The Location of the Critical Facility

The Syrian Petroleum Company said the explosion occurred at a pressure-reduction station and along pipelines running through the Wadiyan al-Rabi’ area near the town of Haran al-Awamid in eastern rural Damascus.

The Misbar team compared satellite imagery with prominent landmarks visible in the video and found that the site is located southeast of Damascus, approximately 36 kilometers away, at the following coordinates: 33°25'8.14"N 36°41'7.71"E.

Pressure-reduction station and pipelines running through the Wadiyan al-Rabi’ area near the town of Haran al-Awamid in eastern rural Damascus.

Field Response and Damage Assessment

Firefighters, Syrian Civil Defense personnel, and maintenance teams were mobilized to contain the flames and prevent them from spreading to the central operational facilities at the Tishreen plant.

According to Abdel Hamid Sallat, director of the Ministry of Energy’s Media Department, technical teams worked to close the safety valves and completely isolate the damaged pipeline, then waited for the remaining gas inside the pipe to burn off as a precautionary measure before beginning cooling operations and conducting a direct technical inspection of the site.

Hours later, Sallat said that technical teams had begun gradually repressurizing the Arab Gas Pipeline between Adra and Deir Ali in rural Damascus, in preparation for gradually returning the Deir Ali plant to service, while technical monitoring of the pipeline and surrounding area continued throughout the operational stages.

The incident injured two people, who sustained varying degrees of injuries and burns while they were near the scene of the fire. Energy Minister Mohammad al-Bashir, who inspected the site, confirmed that the damage included gas pipelines and some damaged power-transmission cables, while the main turbines and generators escaped direct destruction. He noted that work had begun to gradually increase gas pressure in the secondary lines to restore the affected plants to service one by one once cooling and the final assessment had been completed.

Damage Extends Beyond the Gas Sector

The exceptional danger of the incident lies in the fact that its impact was not limited to the gas sector but extended to the electricity and water sectors.

The interruption of gas supplies to the Tishreen plant forced three strategic power stations offline simultaneously: Deir Ali, al-Nasiriyah, and the Tishreen Thermal Power Plant. The three plants form a cornerstone of electricity generation in southern Syria, with the Deir Ali plant alone supplying the largest share of the electricity needs of Damascus and its countryside, as well as large parts of Daraa and As-Suwayda governorates.

The incident also disrupted the operation of drinking-water pumping and purification stations, affecting the continuity of services provided to hundreds of thousands of residents in Damascus, rural Damascus, Daraa, As-Suwayda, and Quneitra.

The Tishreen pipeline fire occurred amid uncertainty over the actual cause of the incident, as authorities have yet to determine whether it resulted from a technical malfunction or was a deliberate act of sabotage.

However, the incident’s timing, following an act of sabotage targeting the Jabsa gas pipeline in the al-Shaddadi area in eastern Syria two days earlier, as well as another incident approximately a month ago, has raised questions about the circumstances surrounding these events.

The incident places the Ministry of Energy and security institutions before a structural challenge related to the difficulty of securing thousands of kilometers of gas pipelines and high-voltage transmission cables extending across open agricultural and desert areas. It also highlights the urgent need to develop automated control rooms and remote-monitoring systems capable of immediately isolating damaged sections without disabling the plants connected to them.

The stability of electricity supplies in the capital and southern Syria remains dependent on the speed with which technical teams replace the damaged sections of the Wadiyan al-Rabi’ pipeline and on the state’s ability to protect critical transmission routes from ongoing disruptions targeting the energy sector and exacerbating the population’s living conditions.

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