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Politics : Rat's Nest - Chronicles of Collapse -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Wharf Rat who wrote (8097)	7/8/2008 11:52:27 AM
From: Wharf Rat	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 24231

China power woes may worsen before Olympics Tue Jul 8, 2008 10:48am EDT BEIJING (Reuters) - China may suffer a power shortage this summer as crippling as four years ago, threatening to cut deeper into industrial operations and stoke another surge in oil imports in order to keep the lights on through the Olympics. Although Beijing has forecast a modest national deficit of 10 gigawatts (GW) when demand peaks in summer -- just 1.4 percent of its installed capacity -- at least four provinces between them are forecasting more than twice that amount as the risks mount. Low coal stocks, surging costs, falling water levels, hotter weather and May's deadly earthquake all point to more severe shortages, analysts say. And while the central government has frozen domestic coal prices and raised power tariffs modestly in an effort to restore profitability for generators such as Huidian Power (1071.HK: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) (600027.SS: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), it is not enough to keep them operating full-throttle. "Power shortfalls will be definitely worse than last year," said Donovan Huang, an analyst with Nomura International Limited based in Hong Kong. "This is not because of insufficient installed generating capacity, but because of insufficient coal due to pricing and transport problems." The spreading woes may rate only second to the country's worst crisis in a generation, in 2004, when more than half the country was hit by blackouts and power deficits amounted to 40 GW, or 10 percent of installed capacity. Coal-rich Shanxi had already been hit by record power shortfalls of nearly 5 GW, or a third of demand, in late June and the deficit is expected to expand further in the coming months due to insufficient coal supply to power plants. ID:nPEK14868 That could force aluminum smelters to cut operations even more, further inflating prices MAL3 that surged on Monday to a record high due to fears over curtailed supply. Continued... View article on single pagePrevious Page 1 \| 2 \| 3 \| 4 reuters.com