Jordan: Socializing Debt and Dependence via Electricity

Hybrid event organised by the SUBLIME seminar (Subsidy lift in Middle East and North Africa).

Speaker: Hisham Bustani (CERI-Sciences Po / CNRS)

Socializing Debt and Dependence: Jordan’s Electricity Sector and Gas Deals with Israel. 

The presentation explores how the restructuring of Jordan’s electricity sector reflects broader dynamics of privatization, debt socialization, and the production of dependency. It traces the shift from an integrated public utility model toward a fragmented system shaped by regulatory reform and the growing role of private capital. These changes have redistributed financial risk in ways that burden public institutions with debt while allowing private actors to secure stable revenues. A state-owned intermediary remains responsible for purchasing electricity, ensuring supply stability, and absorbing fluctuations in global fuel prices, effectively socializing losses while privatizing gains.

The presentation further situates these domestic transformations within a regional context, highlighting Jordan’s increasing reliance on imported energy, particularly long-term natural gas imports from Israel that began in 2020. It examines how such arrangements extend dependency beyond economic restructuring into geopolitical relations, embedding energy infrastructure within broader asymmetries of power.

This seminar is part of the SUBLIME (Subisidies Lift in the Middle East and North Africa: Unveiling the Politics of Welfare in Post-Uprising Societies).