| German Gref found where $150 million can and should be invested The discussion of a package of energy bills in the Federation Council took an unexpected turn. Yesterday, at a meeting of the industrial committee dedicated to the passage of the package in the upper house, the head of the Ministry of Economic Development German Gref made a statement that the Duma amendment banning rolling blackouts is estimated at $100-150 million in investments. It is only known that for more than two years rolling blackouts in the “big energy” sector have been prohibited by order of Anatoly Chubais and have not occurred since mid-2000. And no money was required for this. The minister did not specify what the $100-150 million should be used for, and the ministry’s press service also failed to explain Mr. Gref’s idea yesterday.
RAO UES of Russia suggests that the minister most likely meant the situation developing in some regions with large industrial enterprises. It happens that both factories and the population, hospitals and kindergartens are powered from one line. And if this plant does not pay for electricity, and power engineers begin to limit supplies to it, then it is the so-called sub-subscribers who suffer from this, since in this case it is impossible to force the enterprise not to consume energy. A similar situation arises with electricity resellers, who, in the event of restrictions, prefer to turn off not those who do not pay, but everyone in a row. Apparently, the investments that Mr. Gref spoke about should be directed toward restructuring the networks.
However, it is not entirely clear what exactly the minister decided to fight. If with resellers, then the amount of $150 million is clearly not enough. There are usually more than ten resellers in each area. They own power distribution networks and sales enterprises. To purchase networks from them or build alternative ones, the amount named by Mr. Gref is clearly not enough even for a couple of regions. If it is intended to simply prohibit resellers from disconnecting those who pay, then this can be done without any money at all - it is enough to legally force them to comply with this norm.
If Mr. Gref meant the need to build alternative lines bypassing careless factories, then even more so the amount of $150 million is not enough for the entire country. “Just one large transformer costs several million, or even tens of millions of dollars,” says a top manager at one of the energy companies. RAO board member Andrei Trapeznikov was unable yesterday to estimate the costs of solving this problem.
Mr. Gref's statements obviously have a good purpose - to focus attention on the problem of protecting the country from inappropriate actions in the energy sector. However, “it turned out as always”: the words of the Minister of Economic Development seem to only confirm the idea that the government does not know for sure what kind of investments the electricity reform requires. Nikolay GORELOV |
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