The Big Blackout of the Venezuelan Aluminium Industry

[MRubio]

“The power is blinking, isn’t it?” an employee at a bakery asks her co-workers. It’s 5:26 p.m. in Ciudad Guayana, cradle of the steel industry in Venezuela, and it’s the prelude of something tremendous for the region.

The previous day, March 6th, Nicolás Maduro visited the state-run company CVG Comsigua, old bastion of Guayana’s workers’ struggles, and for the thousandth time he repeated the unfulfilled promise of “recovering the basic industries”. He was just reacting; on March 5th, caretaker President Juan Guaidó met with union leaders from all over the country to intensify the protest. “Our greatest victory against imperialism is the boost of economic production on all companies in Guayana,” said Maduro to the empty cheering of employees set as accessories for the speech.

24 hours after Maduro’s visit, the nationwide blackout began. Ciudad Guayana seemed safe: “At least we have the Guri dam here,” said the locals, with a mixture of relief and astonishment for the national commotion. That night, Ciudad Guayana citizens went to bed thinking only of hyperinflation, shortages and the uncertainty of the new normal in Venezuela.

Basic industries were already affected by the replacement of qualified personnel for “people loyal to the process” and inadequate maintenance, but on December, 2009, Hugo Chávez’s government announced that 400 cells in CVG Venalum and 200 in CVG Alcasa would be shut down, as a way to save energy for the imminent drought of the following “year of El Niño”.

“El Niño is to blame!” Chávez insisted, actually concealing profound management failures.

Journalist Damián Prat says in his book “Guayana, el milagro al revés” that the situation didn’t take Chávez by surprise. In 2002, also a “year of El Niño” the drought did some damage, but the national electric system was still robust and the weather phenomenon didn’t affect power generation. In Venezuela, there’s a direct relation between drought and electricity: most of the generated power comes from four hydroelectric complexes in Guayana, Guri, Caruachi, Macagua I and Macagua II, which supply almost the entire country, including Guayana’s basic industries.

https://www.caracaschronicles.com/2019/03/14/the-big-blackout-of-the-venezuelan-aluminium-industry/

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As I've said repeatedly, we hardly produce squat here. And what we did have in the way of productive capacity was either intentionally destroyed or destroyed through incompetence. Thanks 21 Century Socialism brought to us by chavismo.

[MRubio]

1. God this is classic Venezuela:

“If an automobile assembly line needed primary aluminum, where could they buy it? Abroad,” Prat explains. “They have to import it. That increases production costs and, therefore, the product’s final cost.” Common citizens experience it every day when they try to buy a can of sardines produced in Venezuela and it’s too expensive; not because of the fish, but because of the imported steel the can is made of."

I found sardines in Punta de Mata, 4,000 bs S for a single can. 30,000 bs S per month is the minimum wage here.