Russia and Venezuela to implement energy security joint projects

Caracas, August 9 - Neftegaz.RU. Russia's Rostec corporation and Venezuela's state electricity company CORPOELEC will set up joint projects to improve the Caribbean country's energy infrastructure security.
Rostec said:

• The company will provide comprehensive support and advanced technology to reinforce Venezuela's electrical grid, severely affected in recent years, with parts of the country suffering intermittent power cuts on a regular basis
• CORPOELEC expressed interest in processes and emergencies control automated systems, operational monitoring and data flows management, including the collection, transmission and storage of primary information

Rostec's Project Technologies general director, Sergey Yarosh, told press:

• A technical commission will be set up with 4 representatives from each of the parties to create a list of projects and schedule their execution

However, the energy facilities where the works will take place were not disclosed.

CORPOELEC was created in 2007 during Hugo Chavez's presidency to unify the country's energy sector by merging ten public companies and 6 nationalized private ones.
The corporation is in charge of power generation, transmission, distribution and sales.

The new cooperation agreement between the 2 companies is framed in a 10-year agenda signed in April with a view towards ending Venezuela's electricity crisis.
In 2019, a number of attacks caused 2 major nationwide power outages, on March 7 and March 25 , respectively.
In both cases, most of the country spent over 5 days in the dark.
The electric grid has not fully recovered since.

Following the 2019 blackouts, Venezuelan authorities have claimed that the electric grid continues to receive cyber and physical attacks.

Additionally, Venezuela's power facilities have been hard-hit by an economic crisis that began in 2014 with the drop in oil prices, later exacerbated by US financial sanctions imposed in 2017, followed by an oil embargo and a blanket ban on all dealings in 2019.

Washington's sanctions have likewise led to acute fuel shortages after the former Trump administration put an end to oil-for-diesel swap deals in 2020, leaving Venezuela without its main input to activate backup thermoelectric plants.

However, electrical workers have claimed that Venezuela's current deteriorated energy infrastructure is also a consequence of years of under-investment, lack of maintenance, and qualified personnel migration.

In recent years, Venezuela and Russia have deepened their economic and political ties, with Moscow helping Caracas circumvent US coercive measures to place its oil output.
However, in February 2020, secondary sanctions forced Rosneft to shut down its dealings with PDVSA.

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