Caracas, April 09: President Hugo Chavez extended an electricity emergency for another 60 days on Thursday despite recent rainfall that raised hopes that severe power shortages would end in the oil-exporting nation.
Chavez’s popularity has been dented since a bad drought exposed problems in Venezuela’s hydro-dependent grid and led to strict power rationing.
The power shortages and rationing could boost opposition prospects in legislative elections in September that will be a curtain-raiser for a 2012 presidential election.
Chavez, signing the emergency extension decree on television, called on Venezuelans to continue saving energy by switching off lights.
“We have renewed the electricity emergency while we continue working hastily to build new thermoelectric plants,” he said. The emergency decree allows the government to mobilize resources to deal with the electricity crisis.
The leftist president who has been in power for 11 years reported substantial rainfall in the Caroni river basin that feeds Venezuela’s largest hydroelectric dam, the Guri.
“This is bad news for the squalid ones who said there would be a collapse” of the electrical system, Chavez said, using a term with which he refers to his political opponents.
Water levels at the Guri and other hydroelectric dams have dropped to critically low levels amid the worst drought in a century, which is blamed on the El Nino weather phenomenon.
Venezuela depends on hydro generation for more than 70 percent of its power, and the shortages are jeopardizing its ability to emerge from recession.
The government has put in place energy-saving measures since December, and light industry and businesses have been told to slash electricity use by 20 percent or face being cut off — even as Venezuela’s economy suffers a recession that led to gross domestic product shrinking 3.3 percent last year.
A lack of investment to maintain and expand the country’s electrical system during a period of rapidly rising consumption also lies behind the power crisis.
As it scrambles to boost alternative power generation, Venezuela is speeding up development of its gas fields to provide gas for turbines.
Chavez announced the start of production from a second well in the Cardon IV gas field off the Paraguana Peninsula. He said estimated gas reserves of the field had been raised to between 12 trillion and 20 trillion cubic feet (340 billion and 570 billion cubic metres).
Venezuela on Thursday gave Chevron the go-ahead to tap natural gas from a 7 trillion cubic feet (200 billion cubic metres) field offshore from the delta of the Orinoco river. The government said the first production was expected by 2013.
–Reuters