Govt. agrees to resume partial power exports

After starting to receive 500MW from Brazil on Monday (June 7), the Argentine government agreed to resume partial power exports to Uruguay, newspapers reported. Uruguay was seeking a 200MW supply in line with a previous agreement to receive power from Brazil via Argentina. That accord ended last week. However, under the new agreement Uruguay would only receive 150MW, with supplies subject to Argentina's domestic demand, newspaper El País reported. Uruguay's industry, energy and mines minister José Villar, and the president of the country's state power company UTE, Ricardo Scaglia, met with Argentine authorities in Buenos Aires on Monday to discuss the agreement. UTE expected to start receiving the power as early as Tuesday night. UTE will study whether it will now be possible to shut down its 220MW La Tablada diesel-fired plant, which it had to restart last week to make up for the lack of Argentine supplies. Operating La Tablada with imported diesel fuel is much more expensive than importing power from Brazil or increasing hydro generation, but UTE's hand has been turned by low water levels at its Salto Grande reservoir. "The problem continues to be the lack of water. If we had all the original export contracts from Argentina [for 338MW] we would still have to start up thermoelectric plants," Scaglia said. Argentina cut power exports to Uruguay in March to conserve domestic power supplies in the face of natural gas shortages.