Noboa fires energy minister, declares a national emergency as power blackouts return

Although acting Energy Minister Roberto Luque said Tuesday there are no “easy short-term solutions” to Ecuador’s energy crisis, measures are being taken to “control the damage” of the blackouts that began Monday night.

New Energy Minister Roberto Luque

“With better management and scheduling we can reduce and sometimes eliminate the hours of disruptions,” he said. “Poor planning is a big part of the crisis we face today and we will work day and night to fix this.”

Luque assumed Energy Ministry duties following President Daniel Noboa’s decision to fire former minister Andrea Arrobo. In a statement, the president blamed poor management and communication for the new round of blackouts. In addition, he blamed corruption within the publicly owned utilities for technical and procedural problems plaguing the power grid. “As in many other cases in the public sector, there has been a lack of executive resolve to combat the entrenched corruption, and this is about to change,” Noboa said.

In a press conference with Government Minister Mónica Palencia and Administration Secretary Arturo Félix, Luque said he had only been on the job for a matter of hours and would provide a detailed “plan of action” once it had been formulated. “This crisis has unfolded since Monday afternoon and we are working as quickly as possible to develop a functional strategy to confront it.”

An immediate priority, he said, was making sure blackout schedules provided by local utilities are accurate. “We are getting many complaints that the posted schedules aren’t correct and this is something we need to fix.”

Luque blamed the new round of blackouts, in part, on the lack of response by the previous government. “Almost all the measures announced in late 2023 never materialized,” he said. “Contracts for thermal generation projects on the coast were cancelled without explanation in the days before this administration took office.”

Among the other “moving parts” of the current crisis, according to Luque, are climatic conditions.

“We are almost a month into the rainy season, but nationally, we have received less than 50% of the expected rainfall,” Luque said. “What makes the situation more extreme is that this is an extended drought that began in the middle of 2023 so we have had almost a year of drought.”

He added that the drought is affecting a large area of northwest South America, with Colombia, Venezuela, Peru and Brazil also facing large rainfall deficits.

Ecuador’s electrical problems are compounded, Luque says, because of extreme drought conditions in southeast Ecuador, near the Mazar power generation plants. Under normal conditions, these plants provide more than a third of the country’s electricity but are currently operating at about 35% of capacity due to low reservoir levels.

For the Cuenca area, the blackout schedule is posted on the Centrosur website.