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MeneameVenezuela's President Hugo Chávez officially brought 510MW of new thermal power capacity online on Tuesday.
The main asset inaugurated by Chávez was the 300MW Pedro Camejo plant in the city of Valencia in the central state of Carabobo. He also ordered the startup of the 130MW Argimiro Gabaldón plant in Lara state and the 80MW Termobarrancas plant - the only one owned and operated by a private group - in Barinas state. Spanish oil company Repsol YPF (NYSE: REP) leads the consortium that operates Termobarrancas.
"Our social commitment comes before anything else," Chávez said, promising the citizens of "the new Venezuelan society" an electricity service better than anything they have experienced before. "This plant [Pedro Camejo] was built in 1970 to generate 100MW, now we have made it into one of the most modern plants in the country."
The plant has been retrofitted with two custom-made Siemens turbines that can run on natural gas or diesel and Chávez hopes it will operate mainly on the former as this way "we can save 12,000 barrels of diesel a day" with a market value of US$700,000.
The president warned that Venezuela is "still dangerously dependent on hydro generation," a situation exacerbated during a long drought early in the decade.
Pedro Camejo is expected to consume some 80 million cubic feet of natural gas a day supplied by state firm PDVSA Gas pipelined from Anaco in eastern Venezuela. The plant will be operated by state electricity firm Cadafe.
Tuesday's additions mean that in a single day Venezuela's generation base grew more than 2% to over 21,500MW, most of it hydro.
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