FINANCIAL TIMES ► Venezuela’s power crisis: not solved after all

Earlier this week, beyondbrics was cursing immoderately at having to type out the same (quite lengthy) email three times, thanks to repeated power cuts in an internet café in a small Venezuelan town on the Colombian border.

 

It transpired that a sudden resurgence in Venezuela’s electricity crisis, which gave President Hugo Chavez’s popularity such a battering last year, had just begun to cause similar blackouts in eight states across the country – the following day there was chaos in the Caracas metro system as thousands of people had to be evacuated due to power outages.

Worse, electricity minister Alí Rodríguez warned yesterday that if electricity consumption continued to grow, as a result of the economy’s rebound from recession, Venezuela could face “a new crisis”. He said the government would continue to promote energy saving, to eliminate “unnecessary” consumption, and invest some $3bn this year in the power sector.

“Apparently people think that the problem has been solved [a reference to the 2010 electricity crisis] and they have gone back to their old habits of wasting energy,” he said on Thursday. As an aside, it’s interesting to note his words in June 2010: “We have overcome the electricity crisis.”

Luckily, Chavez was visiting Colombia on Friday, so he could ask President Juan Manuel Santos, cap in hand, if Venezuela could buy more of its neighbour’s electricity.

In fact, part of the problem was triggered by an explosion in a gas pipeline from Colombia – some blame sabotage by Colombian rebels, others speculate that it may simply have been caused by poor maintenance.

In any case, those Venezuelans who believed that last year’s electricity crisis was simply the fault of the drought caused by El Niño – leaving hydroelectric reservoirs at dangerously low levels and forcing rationing – might have been surprised. Unusually high levels of rainfall recently mean there is no shortage of water in reservoirs right now.

Maybe the sceptics who argued that the crisis was just as much to do with a lack of investment in infrastructure and maintenance weren’t just scaremongering or trying to “destabilise” the government after all.

Related reading:Venezuela file, beyondbrics