Widening blackouts stifle Venezuela oil production

Frequent blackouts are thwarting Venezuelan state-owned PdV's plans to revive oil production that is now hurtling toward 1mn b/d by year´s end. On paper, state-owned utility Corpoelec has 36.3GW of thermal and hydro generation capacity nationwide, but only 12.5GW was operational in the first half of October, according to an internal electricity ministry report obtained by Argus. The 15 October report indicates that almost two-thirds of Corpoelec's installed generation capacity was out of service because of damaged equipment and chronic shortages of natural gas and diesel feedstock. More…