Lights and larders

Good morning, nice people. Today’s theme: the cost of keeping the lights on and the shelves full.

A suspected drone strike has knocked Kurdistan’s main gas facility offline again. Sharjah-based Dana Gas halted production at Khor Mor after the attack started a fire, cutting off gas to the plants that generate most of the region’s electricity. The fire is out and no one was hurt, but production stays suspended while the damage is assessed, and the company hasn’t given a restart timeline in its statement (pdf).

IN CONTEXT- That one facility fuels more than 80% of the Kurdistan Region’s power, 964 reports. The attack initially took around 2.8 GW of generation offline, with a drone hitting an LPG storage tank as workers took cover in shelters, two sources at the region’s Electricity Ministry told Reuters.

Down in the Gulf, the pressure is on the pantry: Every Gulf state can keep food coming in, but food inflation ran at 12.7% in Qatar in June against 1.5% in Saudi Arabia in July. Our Lede looks at the storage, subsidies, and detours behind that gap.

We promised more on the GCC railway, and we went back for it. We put the financing question and the 2030 deadline to three more analysts, and their answers on the finish date ranged from 2030 to 2034.