Posted on 02/17/2010 9:56:00 AM PST by Donald Rumsfeld Fan
CARACAS, Venezuela: President Hugo Chavez's government said Monday it isn't interested in buying electricity from neighboring Colombia despite Venezuela's struggles with severe energy shortages.
Colombian Energy Minister Hernan Martinez said earlier Monday that his country is producing more electricity than it consumes and could supply Venezuela with power.
But Venezuelan Vice President Elias Jaua spurned the offer, saying his country "is going to power up its own electricity system."
Chavez blames energy shortages on a drought and low water levels at Guri Dam, which supplies about 70 percent of Venezuela's electricity.
Critics call the shortages a result of the president's failure to invest enough in electricity production over the last decade.
Venezuelan Energy Minister Ali Rodriguez suggested Monday that rocky relations between Caracas and Bogota probably induced Venezuela to reject Colombia's offer.
Long-standing tensions between the South American neighbors have worsened in recent months over Colombia's agreement to give the U.S. military more access to its military bases - a deal that Chavez calls a threat to Venezuela.
Rodriguez said Venezuela's efforts to effectively implement an energy savings plan aimed at curbing electricity shortages could be undermined if state-run power companies don't install meters in homes that currently use electricity but don't pay for the government-subsidized service.
"It's difficult to determine who steals and who doesn't if they aren't installed," Rodriguez said.
Millions of poor Venezuelans, particularly those inhabiting the sprawling slums ringing major cities, help themselves to electricity for free by splicing wires onto power lines.
The practice has been widely tolerated by authorities for years. - AP
Couple of billion hamsters on treadmills? Unfortunately when I read this I was drinking coffee and made a mess. hee,hee.
Critics call the shortages a result of the president's failure to invest enough in electricity production over the last decade.
Classic leftism.......blame the weather.
The water level at the dam is not that low. The fact that half the turbines are out of order is why. They are out of order beccause Hugo has wasted all the money dedicated to maintaining and upgrading the electric system for the last decade.
This is right out of Atlas Shrugged. In the last chapter the looters (AKA socialist) couldn’t keep the electrical grid up and the lights over NYC dimmed then went out permanently.
Yes, look how well those socialists centrally manage the economy. We need more of that here! /s
Meanwhile Hugo and friends played a game of baseball at the Caracas stadium, at night with all its lights glaring.
I figured it had to be something like that. Socialists have to lie to stay in power. e.g. Obama.
I have 3 or 4 Venezuela blogs on my bloroll. I’m weird that way.
What's Colombia doing with all that power they're generating but not using?
Lighting up remote acres of incandescent light bulbs?
Dribbling it out of starter cables into the Gulf of Mexico?
I once thought of taking occasional excess power out of the California grid and storing it through giant electrodes in an inland sea.
But I became afraid that I would get arrested for a Salton battery.
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