Central Puerto
After a week where it was in the headlines of the media, Enel, the Italian company that owns Edesur in the country, announced that it sold its local electricity generation business for USD 102 million.
Edesur must return the total of the last invoice to the users most affected by the power outages
Minister Sergio Massa instructed the Secretary of Energy and the regulatory entity to apply sanctions on the electricity distributor, which received a fine of 1,000 million pesos
The buyer is Central Puerto, the company that is a partner of Enel’s 25% in Edesur and that sounds like one of its possible buyers. Central Puerto is a company with well-known owners, such as Carlos Miguens Bemberg (formerly Quilmes), the Escasany family (Banco de Galicia), Guillermo Reca (former executive of the investment bank Merrill Lynch) and the Ruete Aguirre brothers (formerly Banco Roberts). Nicolás Caputo, Mauricio Macri’s friend who is a shareholder of Mirgor, left Central Puerto a few months ago, as described today in Dinero, one of Infobae Económico’s newsletters (which can be subscribed to from this link).
Enel is leaving the country: he announced it last November, as part of a strategy that includes divesting of assets in other countries as well, such as Peru and Romania. Thus, it first sold its generation business and then, starting next month, it will try to do so with its electricity distribution company, Edesur.
Power outages: energy demand reached an all-time high in the second week of February
Edesur registered a peak of 4,181 megawatts on Friday the 10th, which caused the interruption of supply in some sectors of the AMBA. How is the company working to offer an improved service in the short term?
“Today, the Enel Group, through its subsidiary Enel Argentina, signed and closed the sale agreement to the energy company Central Puerto SA (“Central Puerto”) of the Group’s 75.7% stake in the generation company thermal Enel Generación Costanera (“Costanera”). At the same time, Enel today signed the agreement on the sale to Central Puerto of the Group’s 41.2% stake in the thermal generation company Central Dock Sud (“Dock Sud”), which – subject to certain conditions – is expected to to close within the first quarter of 2023,” the Italian said in a statement.
Another image of the Buenos Aires power station
“Costanera, located in the city of Buenos Aires, is the largest thermal power plant in Argentina, which was built with a total capacity of 2,305 MW. Dock Sud owns and operates a gas-fired power plant located in the Avellaneda district of Buenos Aires, with an installed capacity of 870 MW. Central Puerto is the second largest power generator in Argentina, with almost 5 GW of installed capacity, listed on the Buenos Aires and New York Stock Exchange (NYSE)”, they added.
Edesur apologized to its clients and once again asked the Government to raise rates to be able to invest
“The structural solution happens because the companies can have sufficient resources to operate,” said Claudio Cunha, Country Manager of Enel Argentina, the mother company of the distributor.
In addition, Enel Argentina operates the El Chocón hydroelectric plant. That’s another asset to come.
After more than 200,000 users last weekend, most of them from Edenor, were left without power supply in the middle of the heat wave, the Government let it be known that it was analyzing the company’s intervention. The Secretary of Energy, Flavia Royón, and the controller of the National Energy Regulation Entity (ENRE), Walter Martello, had already advanced the idea of sanctioning the company from social networks.
In the end there was no intervention, but there was a heavy fine and other sanctions after an urgent meeting between the minister Sergio Massa and the company’s executives.
On Wednesday, Massa instructed the Ministry of Energy and the ENRE to:
1 – Apply a fine of one billion pesos to the Edesur company for quality problems in the service.
2 – Return to users who have been victims of cuts above the average established in the contract of the entire bill of the last month.
3 – Enable a scope of claim for damage to home appliances.
4 – Instruct the implementation of an oversight with audit with the University of Buenos Aires to review the value of regulatory assets, compliance with the investment regime, compliance with response times to users and quality in the transmission service of all the Edesur area.
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