Power shortages in Russian Far East region reach critical point

Source: BBC Monitoring Former Soviet Union - Political Publication date: Jan 28, 2000

Text of report in English by Russian news agency ITAR-TASS

Vladivostok, 28th January: Serious fuel shortages in Maritime Territory in the Russian Far East have resulted in a critical situation in power supply to the Territory. Today, managers of the Dalenergo [Far East Energy] enterprise warned the head of district administrations and municipalities about possible sudden power cut-offs to consumers. The Dalenergo board has asked the municipal authorities to take urgent measures to ensure uninterrupted work of vitally important facilities and enterprises.

Dmitriy Tarasov, Dalenergo chief engineer, said that the situation in the Maritime power grid worsened because of accidents and unstable work of the LuTEK fuel company.

Since 22nd January power supplies have been curtailed toindustrial enterprises and public utilities services inMaritime. Power supplies to the Territory from elsewhere beyond the Maritime has been increased to a technically maximum level exceeding 400 megawatt

Link to story:

http://beta.newsreal.com/cgi-bin/NewsService?osform_template=pages/newsrealStory&ID=newsreal&storypath=News/Story_2000_01_28.NRdb@2@10@3@0&path=News/Category.NRdb@2@16

-- Carl Jenkins (Somewherepress@aol.com), January 29, 2000

Answers

recall earlier this past week that 4-5 tankers of russian petro were coming to USA due to price/profit incentives FOB NY harbor.

It appears the Russian oil industry has shorted their own people to make a bigger profit selling their fuel in the USA.

-- Bill P (porterwn@one.net), January 29, 2000.

* * * 20000129 Saturday

Firsthand Anecdote:

I had the interesting honor of working with two (2) Russian (Green Card) COBOL programmers on a Year 2000 in 1998. According to them, rationed and sporadic power grid service throughout Russia is the NORM rather than the exception for decades.

The indigenous folks have learned to deal with it.

The phrase "critical point" used in this item has got to be taken with a grain of salt.

{ Has anyone travelled in Russia enough to confirm this? }

Regards, Bob Mangus

* * *

-- Robert Mangus (rmangus1@yahoo.com), January 29, 2000.

Much of the power generation in the Russian Far East is from coal- fired plants. The problems there (and in all Russia) extend way beyond possible Y2K glitches. There's more to the story, as shown in http://vla d.tribnet.com/1998/current/text/news1.html"

"Primorskugol coal corporation initiated a bankruptcy procedure against Dalenergo in July because it didn't receive payment for its coal. To date, Dalenergo owes Primorskugol 301 million rubles.

"The upside of external management is that it would place a moratorium on all debt payments by Dalenergo, while the company will still be able to collect debts and pay worker salaries. However, such an arrangement would leave creditors such as Lutek coal mining and energy company, Primorskugol mining company, and various transport firms facing bankruptcy themselves. The companies would be in trouble if they got no money from Dalenergo and yet had to pay their taxes."

Always look under the bed.

-- Tom Carey (tomcarey@mindspring.com), January 29, 2000.