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16 May 2008 - The Chilean and Argentine governments agreed Wednesday to maintain AES Gener SA's Salta power plant shipments to both countries, instead of redirecting all of the plant's output to Argentina, the Chilean Energy Ministry said.
The move staves off the immediate risk of power rationing on the northern SING grid in Chile, as the power diverted to Argentina would have left the SING grid in a precarious situation.
On Monday, the Argentine government asked AES Gener, a unit of AES Corp. (AES) , to send the 100 MW earmarked for the Chilean SING grid to the Argentine market because an Argentine thermal plant went off line for two weeks of maintenance.
"Using the usual channels of dialogue that we maintain with Argentine officials, we analyzed the situation and reached the conclusion that it wasn't necessary to carry out this operation with the Salta plant," Energy Minister Marcelo Tokman said in a statement.
The Salta plant, located on Argentine soil near the Chilean border, supplies both Chile's SING grid and the Argentine market
Salta supplies about 6 per cent of the energy on the SING grid, home to the bulk of Chile's copper mining industry, the largest in the world.
In recent weeks, the mining companies on the SING grid, which account for 90 per cent of grid demand, have voluntarily reduced their power consumption to avoid rationing.
The energy crunch affecting the SING grid is the result of Argentina's cutting back its natural gas exports to Chile and higher international crude prices that have pushed up generating costs. There are no hydroelectric plants on the northern grid.
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