A few minutes after announcing his dismissal, the operator was asked: "How are exports made?"
.
Bitterly, the technician laughed and left without explaining how highly skilled his job was.
The Government closed a key area for regulating the electrical system, laid off its employees
and seeks to learn how energy imports and exports work.
The measure was taken as a preliminary step to
deregulating the market, so that it would function again as it did in the 90s
.
According to sector specialists, the rush to make this change, without a solid comprehensive plan behind,
could complicate the operation of the system
.
For example, the
Wholesale Electricity Market Administration Company (Cammesa)
carries out programmed energy imports in response to demand peaks and takes advantage of offers when neighboring countries have exports with cheap surplus electricity available.
That would not be possible without this area.
On the other hand, Argentina should put into operation more expensive thermal power plants for the system, with the consequent
increase in the average cost
and the need to pass it on to families in their
rates
or to the State, through
subsidies
.
What is Cammesa for?
This week, two advisors from the Ministry of Energy,
Carlos Morales and Mariano Palacios
, appeared at the Cammesa offices and
dissolved the Contracts management, with 9 employees who were fired
.
The
sector, of a purely technical nature and far from politics
, functioned as an
intermediary
between generators and the Agency in Charge of Dispatch (OED), which technically and economically regulates the Wholesale Electricity Market (MEM) and the Argentine Interconnection System (SADI).
This was confirmed to
Clarín
various sources, but the Government denied it.
In the electrical system, the generators sell their energy to Cammesa, which averages the entire cost and resells it equally to the distributors, to reach, at the end of the chain, homes, industries and businesses.
This works like this except in the case of Large Users, who privately contract their supply, such as renewable energy.
Cammesa's Contract Management put in a "bag" the plants that produce at 500 dollars per megawatt-hour (MWh) and the hydroelectric dams that are paid US$ 20. Without a comprehensive change in the regulation, it could It may happen that a distributor in Buenos Aires is assigned the most expensive contract and the rates must be multiplied several times, while in Santa Cruz - for example - they drop considerably.
This regulatory scheme for the market would only work well with a healthy system and with all users paying the real cost of energy with their rates
, an idea towards which the Government is tending but which is still far from being realized.
The energy payment chain
Today there is a virtual
break in the payment chain
of the electricity sector, after the December devaluation.
Generators such as
Pampa Energía, Central Puerto, YPF Luz, Enel, Albanesi and Genneia
- among others - obtain their funds via Cammesa after payment from the distributors (as opposed to the end users) and from the national Treasury, which provides the difference with subsidies.
But
the distributors accumulated a debt of $483.5 billion until mid-February
by not paying economic transactions, as a way of
retaining money to finance the payment of salaries,
taxes, spare parts and essential maintenance.
In the absence of rates that reflect their costs - they say in the sector -
energy companies do not pay for the energy they sell
.
At the other end of the table, the Minister of Economy,
Luis Caputo, sat on the State treasury
to show that the Government of Javier Milei achieved a financial surplus (more income than expenses even after paying interest on the debt). .
In January, he left almost $500,000 million unpaid or the equivalent of all that surplus
that he celebrated and presented to the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
According to market sources, just this Thursday electricity transporters, such as
Transener
, collected 25% of the November operation, which they should have received in full on January 10.
So far,
with a delay of 50 days, some companies have only collected half of what they correspond to
, and they maintain that
the payment of salaries is at risk
.
The general secretary of the Luz y Fuerza union,
Guillermo Moser,
confirmed to
Clarín
that these days salaries are being regularized and that
a 15% parity was arranged
.
The situation also affects the oil companies that sell gas to Cammesa for energy generation.
"The debt accumulated by the National Treasury with companies reaches
$850,000 million. Two months after its expiration, the loudest crying begins
," sources with knowledge of the sector told this newspaper.
NE