CARACAS, Wednesday September 03, 2008 | Update
A total of 77 forced outages due to failures and emergencies was officially reported only in July (Photo: El Tiempo newspaper)
Economy
After describing the blackout that hit on Monday afternoon
nine Venezuelan states as "a serious incident from an operational
point of view," the president of the National Electric Corporation,
Hipólito Izquierdo, said - from the Venezuelan southern
city of Puerto Ordaz - that the outage was caused by the excessive
reliance of the western electric sector on the National Interconnected
System (SIN).
Besides, Caracas was using that day 1,000 megawatts of the
interconnected system, more than double the normal electricity
availability, because the units at the Josefa Joaquina Sánchez
(Tacoa) plant were out of service.
According to Izquierdo, "we lack the generation capacity
necessary to strike a balance in the Interconnected System
which, whenever such failures occur, would allow the system
to meet the demand by taking electricity from elsewhere in
the country."
05:09 PM. Economy. If any country has cashed in on the Bolivarian revolution, that is Brazil, particularly the private companies of the southern neighbor. Over the past five years, it has been awarded contracts for works to be carried out in Venezuela for over USD 14 billion. This puts it as the first recipient of government-to-government contracts, that is, without bidding, since Hugo Chávez took office.