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LATIN AMERICA |
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Ecuador Government Declares Electricity
Emergency Due to Blackouts
QUITO – The Ecuadorian government declared
an emergency in the electricity sector due
to a generating shortfall at the nation’s
biggest hydroelectric plant, which has
forced the adoption of energy rationing
programs across the country.
The coordinating minister of strategic
sectors, Galo Borja, said that the measure
was determined at a Cabinet meeting Friday
in the town of Joya de los Sachas in the
eastern Amazonian province of Orellana.
Borja, in a statement published in the
official online daily El Ciudadano, said
that President Rafael Correa issued a decree
in which he declared a state of electrical
emergency nationwide for the next 60 days.
The measure seeks to guarantee the
continuity and supply of electricity, the
minister said, adding that the decision
responds to the nationwide power shortage
caused by a drop in production at the Paute
hydroelectric power station, the nation’s
largest, affected by severely low water
levels.
Borja said that the state of emergency will
allow the Finance Ministry to take the
corresponding measures to guarantee imports
of the fuel needed by thermoelectric plants,
which use fossil fuels to generate
electricity.
He also said that the ruling, which includes
a series of measures to deal with the power
shortage, requires the state oil corporation
Petroecuador to deliver fuel on an emergency
basis and without prerequisites to
electricity generators.
The government announcement came two days
after the energy rationing program went into
effect across the country that will continue
until Saturday, the minister of electricity
and renewable energy, Esteban Albornoz, said
Thursday.
The drought affecting Ecuador’s southern
Andean region for some weeks has caused a
“drastic decrease” in the volume of water
flowing into the dam at the Paute plant,
which supplies 35 percent of the nation’s
internal electricity demand.
Albornoz said that rationing will mean daily
cuts of between 5 and 10 percent of the
usual electricity supply.
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