Guest essay by Eric Worrall
h/t JoNova – Venezuela, a major oil exporter, has ordered an emergency week long industrial shutdown, to try to prevent electricity demands from exceeding their available hydroelectric reserves.
Venezuela to Shut Down for a Week to Cope With Electricity Crisis
Venezuela is shutting down for a week as the government struggles with a deepening electricity crisis.
President Nicolas Maduro gave everyone an extra three days off work next week, extending the two-day Easter holiday, according to a statement in the Official Gazette published late Tuesday. Maduro had originally said over the weekend that the extended holiday would only apply to state employees.
The government has rationed electricity and water supplies across the country for months and urged citizens to avoid waste as Venezuela endures a prolonged drought that has slashed output at hydroelectric dams. The ruling socialists have blamed the shortage on the El Nino weather phenomena and “sabotage” by their political foes, while critics cite a lack of maintenance and poor planning.
“We’re hoping, God willing, rains will come,” Maduro said in a national address Saturday. “Look, the saving is more than 40 percent when these measures are taken. We’re reaching a difficult place that we’re trying to manage.”
Is this a taste of things to come, if greens succeed in convincing the world to embrace renewables on a large scale? Industry forced to stop production, workers laid off, depending on which way the wind blows, or whether it rained last winter?
One can only imagine the impact such arbitrary green industrial shutdowns must be having, on any remaining Venezuelan businesses. Unplanned plant shutdowns can easily lead to financial ruin – job layoffs, plant closures, bankruptcy and destitution.
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A member of OPEC can’t provide enough electricity for its small country. Pathetic, Socialism, Environmentalism at its best.
..The only thing Socialist are good at is making all their citizens EQUALLY poor !
This article has nothing to do with global warming, climate change, “climate science” or climatology. It’s just about bad management and bad luck in a country where bad management has been the norm.
I have seen not a word about Venezuela having made any moves towards “sustainable” or “renewable” energy, so the word “green” in the title is a bit misleading.
It is of course a great opportunity for commenters to rant on about the evils of socialism. Again.
Meanwhile, Cuba has just bestowed its highest honor on Maduro ahead of Obama’s visit to Cuba. Way to go Maduro. sarc
The situation in Venezuela can be explained by gross mismanagement and massive world-record corruption. For the last 17 years, money budgeted for maintenance was pocketed by politically appointed executives and officials. For the last 15 years there has been no transparent accounting within the oil industry, the power industry or any of the government run agencies. Resulting in a huge feeding frenzy on government allocated funds. At the same time meritocracy was been displaced by political loyalty, especially with respect to influential military officials, in order to ensure loyalty and prevent threats from this sector.
So, during the oil boom, where income of over $1 trillion dollars came into Venezuela from oil expoets, most of this money was stolen. Right now the national oil company has to import light oil from the US, as diluent for their heavy crude projects. Inflation is the highest in the world, and there is no availability of food medecine or manufactured goods. 85% of all food in imported.
Government propaganda preaches of an economic war through a controlled press, by the U.S. against Venezuela, to displace the public outrage against gross incompetence.
They use of all of the hot buttons from the green movement are also part of this propaganda.
I recently recall reading about PDVSA’s intention to begin exploiting the La Luna Fm. oil shales in lake Maracaibo, while the government railed against the evils of “fracking” in the US.
This hypocracy reminds me of Ecuador’s president Correa’s effort to pull in $3 billion dolars in donations from the green movement, so as not to develop the ITT heavy oil complex in the upper Amazon drainage. Eliciting these fund to save the rainforest.
After a few years, and a paltry $47 million. Correa quietly awarded dvelopment of ITT to the Chinese.
With these people, it’s all about external perception and propaganda.
Here is an excellent account of the Guri (Venezuela hydroelectric situation)
http://devilexcrement.com/2016/03/13/the-guri-dam-and-electricity-problem-in-venezuela/
It’s been a little while coming. See this article from Tuesday 11 March 2014 02.15 GMT.
IF you want to see how to destroy an economy and a society, look no further than Venezuela. One year after the death of Hugo Chavez, its disastrous communist president, the country is on the verge of total collapse under his equally appalling successor Nicolas Maduro.
Food is running out, as are other essentials, even though the country claims the world’s largest oil reserves. There are shortages of toilet paper and soap, empty shelves and massive crowds queuing for hours in front of supermarkets. Patients are sometimes having to buy their own medicines; doctors are warning that 95 per cent of hospitals have only five per cent of the supplies they need. The central bank’s scarcity index has reached a record of 28 per cent, which means that more than one in four basic goods are out of stock at any time; and the situation has worsened considerably since the figures were last compiled.
http://www.cityam.com/article/1394504131/venezuela-s-mad-socialist-experiment-destroying-nation
Isn’t Socialism great!?
Venezuela has the largest oil reserves on the planet, yet now has shortages of electricity…., toilet paper, coffee, milk, chicken, meat, vegetable oil, soap, diapers, batteries, etc., etc., etc.,…
This is what happens when a country is ranked 176th out of 178 countries in economic freedom..
Centrally controlled economies work very inefficiently and unproductively because price discovery is removed, which leads to the misallocation of finite land, labor and capital.
All Government is socialist and corrupt. They do whatever it takes to retain their power and gain more. Their is no way to do that without some form of corruption. The government produces nothing to trade away like in free markets using capitalism. They have to take stuff and give it to others to gain their political wealth.
The US constitutional systems has mechanism to prevent government corruption but as you can see with Hillary and Obama it can be worked around. There are people in government, universities, unions, 501c3 groups, think tanks, lawyers, etc, who work night and day to figure out how to destroy the constitution for their own gain.
And guess what? The media is suppose to help prevent the government and their ilk from taking from us by informing the people of what is going on. But they gain political power by going along with the corrupt. That is why our constitutional system is breaking down, no one is minding the store except sites like WUWT and others who are informing at a grass roots level.
The Green movement is just a tool the government uses to take the power. The MSM and a lot of others are making large sums of money off the this transfer of power from the people to the government. The green movement (CAGW) is the most corrupt scheme ever that government has devised to take from the people besides socialism. At least socialism says what it is doing when the green movement lies about what it is doing.
Their will be push back from the people that will need to be larger than the force of the corruption. The longer and more power the corrupt government gets, the larger and more powerful the push back will need to be from us.
For more on the Tasmanian situation, this article is hands down the best so far: http://themarcusreview.com/2016/03/16/tasmanias-energy-scandal/