It was supposed to be a goodwill gesture from an energy company in Turkey.
This summer, the Karadeniz Energy Group lent Lebanon a floating power station to generate electricity at below-market rates to help ease the strain on the country's woefully undermaintained power sector.
Instead, the barge's arrival opened a Pandora's box of partisan mudslinging in a country hobbled by political sectarianism and dysfunction.
There have been rows over where it should dock, how to allocate its 235 megawatts of power, and even what to call the barge.
It has even driven a wedge between Lebanon's two dominant parties among Shiite Muslims: Amal and Hizbullah.
Amal, which has held the parliament speaker's seat since 1992, revealed sensationally last week it had refused to allow the boat to dock in a port in the predominantly Shiite south, even though it is one of the most underserved regions of Lebanon.
Power outages in the south can stretch on for more than 12 hours a day.
Hizbullah, which normally stands pat with Amal in political matters, issued an exceptional statement that it had nothing to do with the matter of the barge at Zahrani port. A Hizbullah lawmaker went further to say his party disagreed on the issue with Amal.