Colombia cuts power supplies to Venezuela, Ecuador

[Judi Lynn]

Colombia cuts power supplies to Venezuela, Ecuador
December 3, 2009 3:14 PM ET

BOGOTA (AP) - Colombia's energy minister says drought has forced his country to reduce exports of electricity to neighboring Venezuela and Ecuador.

Minister Hernan Martinez tells Radio Caracol that Venezuela had been getting 70 to 80 megawatts a day while Ecuador was getting up to 250 megawatts. Supplies to both have been sharply cut in recent days.

Venezuela and Ecuador already have been suffering from periodic power outages in many areas , and drought is threatening their capacity to generate hydroelectric power in the coming months.

Martinez said Colombia needs to save its own water for the dry months ahead.

He denies any political motivation in trimming supplies to countries that have often been at odds with Colombia.

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[Braulio]

1. Colombia is being friendly

They didn't cut the natural gas supplies to Venezuela.

Meanwhile, in Venezuela the government is trying to get SOMEBODY to develop natural gas offshore, but thus far foreign companies aren't doing much. And PDVSA was ordered to buil gas-fired power plants - in the wrong part of the country. I guess one could say Venezuela is a good example of how to destroy an economy. The last smart Venezuelan to leave the country won't even have to turn out the lights, LOL.

[Bacchus39]

2. good to hear insight on the ground. there is a severe draught in northern South America

as you know. I was just in Ecuador. rolling blackouts countrywide due to lack of water to run the power plants. Colombia has to be responsive to its citizens first just as Ecuador and Ven do.

[Braulio]

3. Venezuela and Ecuador missed their targets

It's interesting, I've seen power projections for Venezuela and Ecuador for many years - they knew the problem was coming, in the sense that countries should prepare for drought when their electric power is hydropower. Venezuela has missed its power plant construction target, and to make matters worse, they followed the Cuban's lead and spent a lot of money installing small distributed power plants. These plants consume diesel, or other liquid fuels, which Venezuela could export if it didn't burn them.

The fuel of choice for Venezuela should be natural gas. Alas, it has a natural gas shortage and is importing it from Colombia, because PDVSA under Chavez has become a very inefficient and politized enterprise and it can't even manage to produce natural gas even though it has huge deposits, many of them untapped.

PDVSA's management is lousy, therefore its performance is lousy - plus its riddled with corruption and theft. So I wouldn't expect things to improve - the only thing that'll save them is the middle class flight that's about to start in earnest - the middle class does use more electricity per capita, and as it flees Venezuelan private industry and commerce will collapse.