By Patricia Grogg
HAVANA, Jun 8 (IPS) - The government announcement that electricity
supplies in Cuba now exceed demand during the hours of peak consumption
was received with a collective sigh of relief by Cubans, who have not
forgotten the frequent and lengthy blackouts that occurred, especially
during the summertime, two or three years ago.
"I don't even want to think of vacations like the ones we had in 2004,
when the power outages began again," said Caridad Hernández, who has two
school-age children. She was talking about the severe energy crisis
triggered by breakdowns in the Guiteras thermoelectric plant in the
western part of the country, the main power plant.
Blackouts have a heavy impact on families. "If there is no power, we
don't have water either, because the pumps are electric. And when the
outages are lengthy, there is no gas here either. Add to all of that the
hot temperatures of July and August," said Hernández.
Fans are a necessity, not a luxury item, during Cuba's hot summer
months, when power outages also make preserving food a major challenge.
But this summer, power cuts will not be a major problem for the
Hernández's, except for the sporadic outages caused by the ongoing
efforts to upgrade the power grid, which lead to occasional
interruptions in services.
That work will continue until next year, and the inconveniences will
gradually diminish, Vice President Carlos Lage said Wednesday at the
start of operations of two gas-fired power generating plants in Boca de
Jaruco, 40 km east of the capital.
The plants belong to Energas S.A, a joint venture set up between the
Cuban state-owned companies Cupet (Cuba Petróleos) and Unión Eléctrica
and the Canadian corporation Sherritt International to foment and make
use of technologies capable of cleaning and processing natural gas.
Besides the environmental benefits obtained from converting into energy
a subproduct of the oil industry that used to be burnt or "flared", a
wasteful practice that causes air pollution and emits greenhouse gases,
the installed capacity from natural gas has climbed to 395 megawatts in
Energas and to 495 megawatts nationwide.
Lage noted that this total is larger than the 440 megawatts to be
generated by the country's first nuclear reactor in Cienfuegos, 230
kilometres southeast of Havana. Construction of the unfinished power
plant, known as Juragua, came to a halt with the 1991 collapse of the
Soviet Union, which was providing assistance for building the reactor.
The vice president said the energy generated by the natural gas and
oil-fired thermoelectric plants, along with the small diesel-powered
generators operating around the country, have brought the installed
capacity to 3,400 megawatts, nearly 20 percent higher than peak demand,
estimated at 2,500 megawatts.
"And the outlook is positive, because we are going to continue
installing new power plants, and we are seeing a tendency towards a
reduction in peak demand and consumption, as a result of energy saving
measures," said Lage.
In 2004, the breakdown of the Guiteras plant in the western province of
Matanzas, 87 kilometres from Havana, considered the country's most
efficient power plant, revealed the fragility of the national electrical
power generating system, due to the deterioration of the majority of
thermoelectric plants.
That year's power outages recalled the worst moments of the crisis of
the 1990s, when the cutoff of the annual supplies of 13 million tons of
oil from the now-defunct Soviet Union cut energy output in half.
The crisis, which lasted through 2005, forced the government to
temporarily close down a large number of factories and adopt strict
energy saving measures, as part of a strategy that included the
replacement of high energy consumption equipment with more modern
equipment, such as the replacement of incandescent light bulbs with
fluorescent bulbs.
The government also decided to make enormous investments in the purchase
and installation of thousands of small diesel-powered generators, which
the authorities considered to be more efficient and safer than the
"obsolete" thermoelectric plants, most of which were inherited from the
Soviet era.
>From late 2005, when the generators were installed, to September 2006,
they achieved a capacity of more than 1,000 megawatts -- three times the
installed capacity of the Guiteras plant, which took over seven years to
build.
Cuba hopes to diversify its energy options by developing renewable
sources. But for now it basically continues to depend on oil, over half
of which is imported from Venezuela, which supplies this Caribbean
island nation with 98,000 barrels a day of crude.
According to official data from early this year, domestic output
currently stands at 65,000 barrels a day of mainly heavy oil laden with
sulphur, and 20,000 barrels of gas.
The oil and gas are extracted from a 128-kilometre-long strip of coast
in the provinces of Havana and Matanzas, and most of the wells are
drilled vertically from the shore to between two and seven kilometres
out to sea.
Oil and gas production is expected to increase this year with the
drilling of 39 new wells, 13 by Cuban state companies and 26 in joint
ventures with foreign firms, including Sherritt International.
Besides its investment in Cuba's nickel industry, Sherritt has
agreements to explore for oil offshore, in Cuba's exclusive economic
zone in the Gulf of Mexico, as do Vietnam's state-owned Petrovietnam,
Malaysia's Petronas and Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA).
The first to be granted concessions by the Cuban state to search for oil
in deep water was the Spanish-Argentine Repsol YPF, which was later
joined by India's ONGC Videsh and Norsk Hydro of Norway. They plan to
begin drilling in 2008. (END/2007)
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