Venezuela punishes 80 firms for big power use

Venezuela announced on Sunday 24-hour power cut-offs for 80 firms that have failed to reduce electricity usage in the first punitive measures of a nation-wide drive to save energy amid an electricity crisis.
Restaurants, liquor stores, hotels, gyms, car dealerships and a yacht club were on the list of companies in the capital Caracas that would have their power cut on Monday for failing to bring consumption down 20 percent, the state utility said.
The local unit of Japanese firm Sony Corp will also be sanctioned. President Hugo Chavez's government has introduced rationing, and demanded power cuts across the South American OPEC member, to cope with an electricity shortage that is jeopardising Venezuela's ability to pull out of a recession.
A drought caused by the El Nino weather phenomenon has hit the hydroelectric sector that produces more than 70 percent of Venezuela's electricity. Rains are due within weeks and the government says fears of a "collapse" are unfounded.
The opposition, preparing for a September legislative election being cast as a referendum on Chavez and a curtain-raiser for the 2010 presidential vote, says he is to blame for incompetent management of the power sector.
Polls show Chavez's traditionally high popularity levels, especially among Venezuela's poor majority, are suffering from the power crisis. "This (opposition) campaign has, of course, one single aim: declare Hugo Chavez guilty of everything, even the drought," the leftist leader wrote in a regular Sunday column he pens.
"Indeed, I would love to have the powers I'm accused of by the opposition to defeat this situation which not only hurts Venezuela but the whole world as a result of the destructive voracity of the capitalist system."
Chavez said Venezuela's planned addition of nearly 6 gigawatts of thermoelectric energy this year would help solve the national electricity emergency.
In a carrot-and-stick approach to businesses, state power firm Electricidad de Caracas also published a list of 81 companies that had surpassed the 20 percent reduction target. If the companies to be sanctioned on Monday do not improve their energy-saving performance in the future, they face a three-day cut-off then possible indefinite power suspension, officials have said.