Colombia Restricts Sale of Electricity
to Venezuela, Ecuador
Bogota - Colombia will reduce electricity
exports to Venezuela and Ecuador due to
natural gas supply shortages in some parts
of the country, Energy and Mines Minister Hernan Martinez said.
“We’re going to cut back a little on
electricity exports to Ecuador and
Venezuela,” Martinez told reporters, adding
that the measure would go into effect
gradually beginning Wednesday.
The export reductions are expected to be
small-scale and efforts will be made to
coordinate with the neighboring countries
“because we don’t want to hurt them,”
Martinez said.
The energy minister, who noted that Colombia
exports around 340 MW of electricity to
Ecuador and about 120 MW to Venezuela, did
not specify the size of the cutbacks.
Colombia consumes 800 million cubic feet of
gas per day and is unable to meet current
domestic demand, particularly in the center
of the country, due to a lack of storage and
transport capacity, Martinez said.
Shortages of compressed natural gas, or CNG,
over the past two weeks in Bogota, home to 7
million residents, have especially affected
people who use that gasoline substitute to
power their vehicles.
Colombia is using more natural gas for
electricity generation to avoid further
depleting reservoirs, now at just 70 percent
of capacity, Martinez said.
Officials want to safeguard hydroelectric
supplies due to concerns about the El Niño
weather phenomenon, caused by the periodic
warming of central and eastern tropical
Pacific waters.
The head of forecasts and alerts at the
Institute of Hydrology, Meteorology and
Environmental Studies, Humberto Gonzalez,
told Efe that “El Niño has manifested itself
in a lack of rainfall in the Caribbean and
Andean regions, home to 75 percent of the
population.”
Atmospheric phenomena like El Niño and La
Niña “are becoming periodic when they hadn’t
been before” in Colombia, according to
Gonzalez, who said the current El Niño is
expected to affect the country through the
end of the first quarter of 2010. EFE |
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