One drone strike takes up to 2,800 megawatts off Kurdistan’s grid as the Khor Mor gas field burns again

A drone struck the Khor Mor gas field in the Chamchamal district of Sulaymaniyah province on Sunday evening, Iraq time (early Monday AWST), hitting what local reports described as a sensitive part of the facility and starting a fire. Footage shared after the attack appeared to show smoke and flames rising from the site.

Within hours, much of the Kurdistan Region was in the dark. Omid Ahmed, spokesperson for the Kurdistan Regional Government’s electricity ministry, said gas supplies to power plants in Erbil, Sulaymaniyah, Bazian, Chamchamal and Duhok had been suspended, taking between 2,500 and 2,800 megawatts out of the grid. Security sources put the loss at 70 to 80 per cent of the region’s grid capacity.

The ministry said it would keep hospitals, water treatment plants and other critical services running on hydroelectric power and plants that burn other fuels. As of Monday morning AWST, no timeline for restoring supply had been announced.

Who did it?

Nobody knows yet, or nobody is saying. No group has claimed the attack, and Iraqi officials have not named a suspect. Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi said an initial assessment found no casualties and ordered a joint investigative committee with the relevant Kurdish authorities to establish what happened.

The timing invites the obvious question. The strike came as the war between Iran and the United States and Israel moves into a new phase, with Washington extending its blockade of Iran to land borders and the Caspian Sea and Tehran threatening heavy retaliation if the US escalates. But there is no evidence so far that the attack is connected, and it remains unclear who launched it.

Why does one gas field matter so much?

Khor Mor is the Kurdistan Region’s largest gas field, operated by the Pearl Petroleum consortium led by the UAE-based Dana Gas and Crescent Petroleum. Its gas feeds the power stations that generate much of the region’s electricity, so a single hit on the processing or storage facilities can switch off power for millions of people across the region’s three provinces.

That concentration is exactly what makes it a target. Losing up to 2,800 megawatts is roughly the output of a large coal-fired power station, gone in one strike, and the region has limited backup: hydroelectric dams and plants running on more expensive liquid fuels can cover essential services, but not ordinary demand.

Has this happened before?

Repeatedly. A drone attack temporarily halted production in January 2024, and a strike in April 2024 killed four foreign workers. Another drone attack in February 2025 caused no damage. On 26 November 2025, a strike set a gas storage tank on fire and cut supplies to the power plants, the closest parallel to Sunday’s attack.

None of those attacks has been publicly solved, and no group has claimed the recent ones. Each has exposed the same weakness: the region’s power supply depends on one field, and that field has proved hard to defend against cheap drones.

What does it mean beyond Iraq?

For the people of the Kurdistan Region, the immediate cost is lost power for homes, businesses and water supply until gas flows again. For the wider region, it is another sign that energy infrastructure is in the firing line as the Iran war widens: Saudi Arabia’s energy ministry said on Sunday that falling debris damaged an Aramco building in Riyadh during what it called an attempted attack.