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Residents, Copper Mine Hit By Central Chile's Fourth Power Cut This Year
Chilean authorities vowed to punish companies responsible for the fourth power outage this year after residents and businesses in capital Santiago and at least one copper mining operation were disrupted today.
Power went down in central and southern Chile for almost an hour from 2:38 a.m. New York time, the central grid’s supervisor said in an e-mailed statement. The outage was caused by a failure at the Polpaico substation, the same facility that led to cuts yesterday. A transmission failure caused cuts in Santiago on July 19.
The recurring outages are “unacceptable” and those found responsible may pay fines and client compensations, Energy Minister Ricardo Raineri said today in an interview with National Television. They are not “necessarily” the result of damage caused by February’s earthquake, he said.
“We think that the interruptions are related to the way that the power infrastructure is being handled, maintenance problems and human errors,” Raineri said in the interview.
Chile continues to replace power equipment after February’s quake led to a blackout in March, Raineri said after the July 19 cut.
Codelco, the world’s biggest copper producer, said the outage affected some installations at its El Teniente mine for 20 minutes and “minor” equipment at its Salvador unit. Codelco’s Ventanas and Andina units weren’t affected by today’s cut, the state-owned company said in an e-mailed statement. It said a 10-minute cut yesterday temporarily halted operations at its Salvador and Andina divisions.
Los Pelambres Unaffected
Antofagasta Plc, operator of the Los Pelambres copper mine, had no interruptions today, Oliver Winters, an external spokesman with London-based public relations firm Bankside, said by telephone. Marcelo Esquivel, a spokesman for Anglo American Plc, which operates the Los Bronces mine in central Chile, didn’t respond to e-mail and phone messages.
An official at state-owned oil refiner Empresa Nacional del Petroleo, who declined to be named citing company policy, said there are no reports of production interruptions.
The government may fine transmission company Transelec SA as much as $9 million for the cuts, El Mercurio reported today. Transelec halted all work on the central grid and will deploy “experts” to evaluate the system and its procedures, the Santiago-based company said on its website.
“Drastic measures are necessary,” Jorge Pizarro, president of Chile’s Senate, said in a statement posted on the Senate’s website. “After two outages in less than 24 hours we have to act efficiently and find those responsible, for the peace of mind of the thousands of citizens impacted.”
To contact the reporter on this story: Eduardo Thomson in Santiago at ethomson1@bloomberg.net.
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