Residents of Roraima remain without power from Venezuela after Brazil resumes agreement

The state of Roraima has not yet started receiving electricity imported from Venezuela after the federal government resumed its agreement with Brazil at the end of last year, according to the National Electric System Operator (ONS).

The reason, according to the Reuters It is Newspaper with the agency, is that the entrepreneurs authorized for the operation have not yet carried out a fundamental test of 96 uninterrupted hours on the transmission line between Brazil and Venezuela.

“They have to do a continuous 96-hour test and they haven’t been able to do this test yet. We have already passed this condition on to the entrepreneur. The dates for these tests have already expired a few times”, stated Luiz Carlos Ciocchi, general director of the ONS.

The operation would be conducted by the energy trading company Âmbar, belonging to the J&F group, which negotiated directly with Venezuela to purchase energy from the Guri hydroelectric plant. The contract will be inspected by the Federal Audit Court (TCU) due to the amounts approved for transmission – R$2 billion for two years.

Although the Ministry of Mines and Energy (MME) announced in December last year the resumption of purchasing energy from Venezuela, the lack of essential testing has delayed the process.

The objective of the resumption was to reduce the costs of serving the State of Roraima, which is not integrated into the National Interconnected System (SIN) and depends mainly on local thermoelectric generation, subsidized by the Fuel Consumption Account (CCC) of around R$ 1.3 billion.

Brazil hoped to reduce total costs to serve Roraima, since the values ​​practiced in the commercialization contract between Âmbar and Venezuela were lower than those of the thermoelectric plants that currently supply energy to the state.

Despite the approval of Âmbar’s proposal last year by the Electricity Sector Monitoring Committee (CMSE), the validity of the agreement expired in January this year, without the necessary tests being completed.

A People’s Gazette contacted Âmbar Energia to comment on the delay in starting the transmission and is awaiting a response. The MME stated that it “remains mobilized to receive clean and renewable energy from Venezuela”.

“The ministry understands that it is essential to have a lower cost than that practiced in the isolated system of Roraima, which still relies on generation from fossil fuels”, pointed out the ministry.