Last night, the Algoma Value ship arrived in the country from Puerto Bolivar, Colombia, with 60,000 tons of coal, which began to be unloaded this morning at the dock of the Punta Catalina Thermoelectric Power Plant (CTPC).
The information was offered today by the Minister of Energy and Mines, Antonio Almonte, informed in the program Hoy Mismo de Color Visión, according to a press release from the institution.
The note indicates that this is the first of five shipments of 60,000 tons of coal each, for a total of 300,000 metric tons.
That ship, it revealed, would be unloading throughout the day today and would immediately sail to Colombia to look for another 60,000 tons of the mineral and so on until completing the 300,000 tons agreed between the highest authorities of both countries.
He said that Punta Catalina has coal assured for the rest of the year if one takes into account the 400,000 tons of the emergency tender initiated this week, plus the 900,000 tons of another tender that had been initiated in June.
“All these provisions have been taken so that the plant will continue to produce energy normally,” he said.
Almonte maintained that Punta Catalina has not stopped operating due to a lack of coal and that currently the two plants supply the system with 680 megawatts, 350 megawatts one and 330 the other.
“At practically no time has Punta Catalina been shut down due to coal issues, yesterday it was also offering around 600 megawatts and the previous days. There were a couple of days when Punta Catalina had to drastically reduce its production to be able to handle the coal depletion,” he indicated.
“The outages that had to do with Punta Catalina were a few days ago…. Many of the blackouts produced in the last few weeks were due to other failures that could be failures of circuits in bad conditions which is what happens, for example, to a great extent in Puerto Plata and some regions of the Cibao, and the other is that there are private plants of the system that have also had their problems and have been out for one, two or three days of electrical service for some reason of normal malfunctions,” he said.
Almonte revealed this Wednesday the existence of an agreement with the Colombian authorities to supply at least five shipments of the mineral and guaranteed that the Thermoelectric Power Plant will not be paralyzed for lack of coal.
We, in these days, have made great efforts and sacrifices to obtain coal; at present we have coal, the required to keep Punta Catalina producing energy at 100 percent, in spite of the fact that the company responsible for supplying it has repeatedly failed to comply with the delivery of the mineral”, he said.
