CARACAS (Reuters) – Blackouts hit most of Venezuela yesterday, affecting an oil refinery and the Caracas metro in a growing headache for President Hugo Chavez months after electricity rationing dented his popularity.
The 146,000 barrel-per-day El Palito refinery had to be restarted after the failure and the capital’s metro transit system ground to a halt at the beginning of the evening rush hour, forcing thousands of commuters onto the streets.
Electricity Minister Ali Rodriguez said power was restored quickly in most of the 17 affected states and the capital. A metro official said service was later restored.
Other refineries were operating normally in the OPEC member, the state oil company, PDVSA, told Reuters.
“In general, energy has been restored in all the country,” Rodriguez told state television late in the afternoon. He said the outages were caused by the failure of an 800-kilowatt cable, affecting 6,000 megawatts of capacity.
Just last week, a number of states were plunged into darkness by blackouts that also caused problems on the metro, which carries some 2 million people a day.
Throughout 2010, many Venezuelans were subjected to strict electricity and water rationing blamed by the government on a drought caused by the El Nino weather phenomenon. Combined with an economic slump, the problems with utilities damaged Chavez’s popularity.
But Chavez cancelled a plan to ration electricity in Caracas after a chaotic first day of cuts left poor, crime-ridden neighbourhoods in the dark and workers stuck in elevators.
Rainfall and heavy investment in new oil-fired power stations helped overcome the crisis before parliamentary elections in September. But experts warned that the national grid was still running close to capacity.
The socialist president who was first elected in 1998 and draws his support largely from working-class Venezuelans is preparing a re-election bid in December 2012.
