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Two workers are sitting on their pushcarts inside Erbil market waiting to be hired for carrying loads.

A project to supply, process, and transport natural gas to Kurdistan Region for much-needed and more affordable electricity is rapidly progressing.

The United Arab Emirates' Dana Gas and Crescent Petroleum are to start producing natural gas in the Iraqi Kurdistan Region as of next month, and they promise to put an end to the devastating power and fuel crisis.

The head of Dana Gas, Hamid Dhia Jaafar, announced that his company and Crescent Petroleum will start producing natural gas in Kurdistan Region on August 1, 2008. The production will be from the Kurmor field in Suleimaniya Province, and it will provide the region's needs in terms of power supply and cooking gas.

Jaffar, owner of Crescent Petroleum and an expert and investor in the field of oil and gas, says that his companies are set to start producing natural gas in the largest gas field in the Iraqi Kurdistan Region.

According to company announcements, the field will produce 75 million square feet per day at the beginning. This number will increase in the year 2009 to reach 300 million square feet per day.

The main use of this gas product will be to operate the two new power stations in Erbil and Suleimaniya, which together will generate 1,250 megawatts of electricity and would fulfill the electricity needs of the region. This is besides providing liquid (cooking) gas for the whole region.

The natural gas is to be transported to the power stations through hundreds of miles (kilometers) of pipelines that are already in place.

"The produced gas of this field will save $2.5 billion USD for Kurdistan Region per year," Jaafar said. "At the same time, the project will supply more than 4 million Iraqis with electricity and create jobs for thousands of other Iraqis."

According to Jaafar, this amount is saved from the money that is currently spent on buying liquid gas from outside of the region.

Kurdistan has been suffering from electricity and fuel shortages for a long time, especially since the 2003 Iraq War. Demands on electricity and fuel increased sharply due to increasing incomes and poor security situations that hindered the import of fuel from other parts of Iraq and neighboring countries.

Many efforts have been made by the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) Ministry of Electricity as well as some efforts by the private sector to work out a solution to the power shortage in the region.

An example of those efforts was the construction of the two huge power stations in Erbil and Suleimaniya and several other smaller ones in other cities and towns of Kurdistan. The hope was that the electricity crisis would come to an end; however, due to the fact that the majority of those power stations, including those of Erbil and Suleimaniya, were consuming fuel for production and it was hard to provide their fuel needs while a fuel shortage is already in place, not only did none of those efforts succeeded completely, but they also increased the demand for fuel and thus increased the fuel crisis as well.

Many demonstrations were organized by the region's residents, particularly by students and youths. There were threats that the regional government would lose its popularity and support among its people due to its inability to alleviate the crisis. Therefore, the government has been allocating a large budget for power generation and subsidizing fuel for the citizens.

Experts believe that if what Dana Gas and Crescent Petroleum announced is true and continuous, then in addition to improving the situation of fuel and electricity in the region, it will have an overall positive impact on the region's economy and might lower inflation and the price level of other things as the firms' costs are expected to lower with better and cheaper power and fuel supply.

Dana Gas and Crescent Petroleum, Arab companies from the United Arab Emirates, have been working hard since they won the license for their project in the region and signed contracts with the KRG to complete it in the shortest time possible. Their project is considered one of the largest and fastest completed projects in the field of oil and gas in Kurdistan Region.