POWER, CORRUPTION & LIES- Bolivia follow blackout Venezuela

Evo Morales publically "nationalized" the energy companies in Bolivia on May 1st, forcing private investors and worker cooperatives to sell their ownership shares of jointly owned companies.   So the state assumes total ownership and management control over the production, transportation, and sales of power that these companies held, constituting 80 percent of the sector in Bolivia, with a few regional cooperatives outside State hands.  What in fact was a mixed-model of ownership is now becoming a solely state-run system.

By looking around the region, there is no more striking contrast as that presented by the energy policies and results of Colombia and Venezuela, which illustrates why Bolivia will likely end up in failure.

A Tale of Two Countries -

According to the CIA factsheets for Colombia and Venezuela, the neighboring countries are roughly around the same size, Colombia about a sixth bigger, and with more people 43.6m to 26.8 m, (est).. But, Venezuela with 17 million less people has almost double the GNP of its neighbor. ($353.5 billion 2009 est.vs. 228.6 billion) and has a higher per capital income $13,200 vs. $9,200 . Government revenue is roughly par, with Venezuela's government spending about 15 percent more ( $92.04 billion vs. 79 billion).

 "In 2008" Venezuela "was the eighth-largest net oil exporter in the world"; a petroleum powerhouse that co-founded OPEC and . Colombia may have a more diversified economy but it doesn't have the Orinoco oil belt or Lake Maracaibo in its territory. Historically, high oil prices mean Venezuelans are on the average richer than their more populated neighbors - in fact sometimes Venezuelan income levels have been first world - in the 50's the country had a GNP close to West Germany's. Venezuelas government can afford to spend much more per capita on its citizens than Colombia on infraestructure and social programs.

Venezuela not only has oil and gas to spare, and money, but it has a vast hydsroelectric potential (think monster rivers w/big elevation changes) and major infraestructure in place.he  Guri Dam Complex on the Caroni River, known officially as the Central Hidroeléctrica Simón Bolívar, one of the 3 largest hydroelectric plants in the world, either 2 or 3 behind Brazil's Itupi and China's Three Gorges Dam. Planning for the complex started under dictator Perez Jimenez, and the first stages were completed in the early 60's.

So with this kind of riches and government spending, why in the world is the electric power grid in Venezuela dangerously close to collapsing, threatening the country's future growth.

Blame it on El Niño, the climatic phenomenon that is causing a drought in that part of South America. Lower water levels in the rivers that drive generators means less power.


With this going on, you'd expect next-door Colombia also suffering the drought to be going through a similar energy crisis - Bogota and Medellin sharing Caracas-style blackouts.

Not the case by a mile, if anything Colombia has excess capacity it has offered to sell to Venezuela.

Sin embargo, El Niño no golpea con la misma fuerza a todos los países, pese a que los déficits de agua que produce son similares. Mientras en Ecuador y Venezuela los apagones de hasta ocho horas diarias empezaron a convertirse en cotidianos durante los meses de enero y febrero, en Colombia el país logró mantener sus luces encendidas, incluso con capacidad de sobra que podría vender a sus países vecinos

First of, Venezuelans of all classes, have benefited enormously from the oil boom, and they have more money to spend. That has driven demand for power way up. If you are poor and you suddenly are able to afford things like refrigerators, TV's, air conditioners, you buy them. Middle class folks, all the sudden can afford more goodies, TV's. Tony restaurants, night clubs, and fancy shopping malls spring up to cater to the new and old rich and they all use up power. That happens in an oil boom, and it has happened in Venezuela before in the 70's and again the early 90's.

El Nino, like an oil boom is cyclical, and comes through Venezuela.

And the chaotic response has included Chavez' emergency rolling blackouts, importing Castro's former-Interior Minister to advise on the crisis, government prayer meetings for rain, buying huge turbines from US Multi-National General Electric,

El caso de Venezuela es paradójico, pues se trata de un país prodigiosamente rico en recursos energéticos. No sólo cuenta con las consabidas enormes reservas de hidrocarburos. Además, tiene la segunda hidroeléctrica más grande del mundo después de Itaipú. Se trata de Guri, una represa que tiene una capacidad de 10 millones de kilovatios/hora, equivalente a 300.000 barriles diarios de petróleo, la que sólo es una de tantas represas del río Caroni, todas administradas por Electrificación del Caroni (Edelca).

lo inexorable en la situación energética no es el clima, sino la realización o no de inversiones adecuadas.

El Niñoes también una dura prueba para las matrices energéticas de los países andinos..


Lo que representa Edelca no es menor, pues la compañía abastece 70% de la demanda eléctrica, por lo que su incapacidad de generar energía frente a un fenómeno climático no habitual es síntoma de la ausencia de inversiones con las que planificar contingencias como ésta.

Actualmente Venezuela tiene una capacidad instalada de 23.642 mw, según informó el mismo presidente Hugo Chávez, una cifra que plantea oficialmente el ambicioso desafío de generar 10.000 nuevos mw en cinco años, amén de reducir drásticamente la demanda.

“Somos muy derrochadores, los que más gastamos electricidad en América Latina”, ha dicho Chávez. Pero la voluptuosidad del consumo venezolano es sólo una parte pequeña del problema. “En 11 años el gobierno sólo ha logrado incrementar la capacidad en 3.200 mw”, dice Guillermo Ovalles, ex presidente de la empresa transmisora de energía Elecentro y actual presidente de la comisión de energía eléctrica de la Federación de Cámaras y Asociaciones de Comercio y Producción de Venezuela.

meanwhile Colombia has adequate energy supplies, despite being twice the size and having half of the budget of Venezuela.  (not to mention 10's of thousands of crazies waging war on the state - and for control of drug routes) 

En Colombia Después del colapso energético de 1993, las autoridades empezaron a trabajar en un parque de generación eléctrica de bases hídrica y térmica. Gracias a esas inversiones, el país hoy tiene una capacidad instalada de 13.800 mw (53% proveído por plantas térmicas y 47% por hidroeléctricas). Una diversificación de la matriz eléctrica notable, más si se considera que en el reciente 2008 las plantas hidroeléctricas respondían por el 80%.


Hoy Colombia está iniciando su programa de ampliación del parque energético entre los años 2010 y 2018, mediante el cual desarrollará nueve proyectos, la mayoría de los cuales entrará a operar antes de 2015. Las inversiones sumarán más de US$ 6.000 millones y adicionarán 3.421 mw al sistema nacional.

This is what you get with sensible policies