Despite rate hikes of 1400%, Argentines suffer 66% more power outages

[sandensea]

A report published by Argentina's Energy, Technology, and Infrastructure for Development Observatory (OETEC) revealed that power outages affected 66% more Buenos Aires metro area users last December compared to the same month last year.

The average daily number of affected metro area users, despite slightly milder temperatures, rose from 82,891 in December 2016 to 137,266 last month - equivalent to roughly 400,000 people. The Buenos Aires metro area is served by two private power companies, Edenor and Edesur, with a total of 5.3 million household and non-residential customers.

The outages, which so far in January have affected an average of 120,000 users daily, have renewed calls for Energy Minister Juan José Araguren, a longtime Shell executive listed in November's Paradise Papers scandal, to resign.

OETEC notes that December 2017 temperatures were an average of 2 °F cooler than the same time last year. Daytime highs in Buenos Aires exceeded 82 °F during 17 days last month, compared to 24 days the previous December.

While power outages are common in Argentine cities during the Southern Hemisphere summer months, their much higher incidence this summer has become especially contentious in light of massive rate increases authorized by the right-wing Mauricio Macri administration.

Residential rates since December 2015, when Macri took office, have risen by an average of 1400% from .08 to 1.28 pesos (6.8 U.S. cents) per Kwh - and will have risen by 1700% by February. Electricity consumption has fallen by 4.6% over the last two years as households and industries have reduced usage.

The Macri administration defends sharp rate hikes for power and other utilities as cost-saving measures designed to incentivize investment by utility firms.

But while revenues at Edenor and Edesur have ballooned in 2017 to $1.5 billion and $1.2 billion respectively from around $420 million each in 2015, rate deregulation has also brought about much higher power supply and distribution costs.

This - plus the loss of $1 billion in federal subsidies between them - has led to a two-thirds decline in profits at Edenor, and an outright reversal from a $146 million gain in 2015 to a $54 million loss at Edesur in the first 9 months - a $200 million difference.

The resulting decline in investment led to what the OETEC report calls a "marked deterioration in the quality of service at Edenor and Edesur."

Maurizio Bezzeccheri, president of Edesur (run by Italy's Enel) acknowledged the problem in an interview with the conservative news daily La Nación. Marcelo Mindlin, whose Pampa Energía conglomerate controls Edenor and who's a close business associate of President Macri, declined to comment.

At: https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.oetec.org%2Fnota.php%3Fid%3D3024%26area%3D1&edit-text=

[Judi Lynn]

1. What a horror show. Conservative Pres. ultra-close with energy chiefs. Whoever has heard of that?

They are all playing by the same dirty plays books, aren't they?

Citizens are cutting back as hard and fast as they can, even as Macri deteriorates their quality of life daily with shocking energy cost increases, as services are degrading steadily. He has already pressed his luck against the population right to the limit, long ago. Do they dare rebel? Speak out? Did the last dictatorship simply teach them all to huddle in the dark and muffle their complaints, and tears? Did the missing 30,000 Argentinians, missing after being tortured, and murdered, or thrown out of airplanes over the ocean leave scars too deep in the people to ever chance the same thing happening to them at the hands of the first President since the Dirty War to publicly praise the tyrants, if they dare condemn him?

Residential rates will be "1700% by February" higher than they were when Macri took office in December 2015. Doesn't seem possible, unfortunately he's pulled it off without a challenge or a look backward at his damage. Who would want to see where he's going with his rampage?

Hope it will blow up in his gnarly, idiotic face. Shame of Dirtbag Macri.

[sandensea]

2. Alas, he has two very important advantages: support from most big media, and a disunited opposition.

Much like Thatcher, who governed for 11 years on around 40% support from the electorate - but with an opposition split in half, bickering as to how conciliatory to be (or not to be).

This has led to electoral consequences - i.e. the rather good showing by the ruling "coalition" last October (and by 'coalition' I mean Macri's far-right PRO towing the much larger but docile UCR around). But has also helped get Macri a whopping 72% passage rate in Congress for the bills he's sponsored since taking office.

When he's not imposing them by decree, that is.

And that reminds me. I should post something about the latest one: a decree rescinding collective bargaining for teachers (!). It's illegal, of course - but try taking his regime to court over it. Not a chance.

Cheeto must have already called Macri to congratulate him.

Thanks as always for your insights, Judi. Hope the winter's been a joyous one.

[Judi Lynn]

3. It's hard to believe the same hard-right media, like Clarin, the giant,

has controlled almost everything since completely white-washing the Dirty War, concealing information like the grotesque continual kidnapping, torturing, and murdering, even throwing from military airplanes over the Atlantic, and rivers of stripped, and shackled together political prisoners. Their bodies continued to float to shore, just as the Colombian paramilitary murder victims did, for so many years, and Chilean political victims' bodies did, down the Mapocho River, seemingly forever, under the evil gaze of US-puppet, bloody dictator Pinochet.

Right-wing control of the huge newspapers in the Americas has been paramount during the reign of the fascists, hasn't it? It overwhelms a person when one tries to imagine how they could have pulled it off without absolute control of public information.

So many US taxpayers' hard-earned tax dollars, demanded by the government, have been handed off to these fascist newspapers via outright payoffs, as in Nixon's millions to El Mercurio, via CIA, and his use of CIA "journalists" in El Mercurio's newsrooms, going all the way to George W Bush's secret salaries doled out to the 20 or so reporters hired to cover Latin American news for the Miami Herald who were "outed" during Dubya's White House occupation.

Anyone who follows these incredible events is well aware of how and why this happens. I'm sure there would NOT be 30,000 missing political prisoners today had this practise not been mastered as a conventional tool long ago.

So now, any teachers who protest very low salaries, working conditions, etc. will instantly ALSO be seen as "political enemies" by Macri and his assortment of fellow fascist sociopaths in his administration.

"Mauricio, you've done a heck of a job."