petroleumworld

CARACAS
Petroleumworld.com, Feb 1, 2010

Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez on Sunday announced in its Sunday TV program a special one billion dollar fund to strengthen Venezuela's power grid and prevent another energy crisis like the one the country is now suffering.

"We've decided to create a national electricity fund for electricity development," Chavez said on his weekly radio and television show "Alo President" (Hello President).

He said a one-billion dollar appropriation would go to develop 59 power generating and distributing projects and 50 operating and maintenance projects.

Venezuela is one of the top exporters of oil in the world but meets domestic energy demand with electricity generated by its hydraulic vast resources which supplies 76 percent of the nation's power needs.

But with lack of maintenance of the existing non hydroelectric and hydroelectric generating plants and no investments in new developing projects to meet the growing demand the situation this year is very critical for the nationalized electric generating industry, half of the country is experiencing electric cuts on a daily basis.

The power shortage led to a programmed electricity cut for four hours in Caracas earlier this month, which the government had to revoke after the first day of public outrage.

The government said it needs to slash power consumption by 20 percent across the country to avoid a total collapse of the electric grid and would soon announce a new power cutting plan for Caracas said Electric Power Minister Ali Rodriguez.

Story by Elio Ohep from editor of Petroleuworld
Editor@Petroleumworld , 58 212 635 7252; 58 412 996 3730, Caracas

Petroleumworld.com / 01/31/2010 22:30

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