Senior Ministry of Energy and Water Resources officials held a press conference today to market the end of this summer's "electricity drought". Present were Minister of Energy and Water Resources Uzi Landau, ministry director general Shaul Tzemach, Israel Electric Corporation (IEC) (TASE: ELEC.B22) chairman Yiftach Ron-Tal and CEO Eli Glickman, and Public Utilities Authority (Electricity) chairwoman Orit Farkash.
"I am pleased to announce that we successfully made it through the summer," said Landau. "With all parts of the industry working together in common cause, and, of course, thanks to the unprecedented cooperation of the public, we had no initiated blackouts. I wish to offer special thanks to the public. It is not easy for the government to say, 'We need your help', but the public understood and contributed. We could certainly see a drop of up to 300 megawatts during peak demand times, and the general public was responsible for this."
Landau added, however, "The public should not have to provide a solution to the power industry's problems. That is the job of the government. Let there be no mistake, Israel's power industry is still in a deep crisis, and an electricity shortage is expected in 2013, too, but not a drought like this year, because for the first time in 15 years, independent electricity producers will come on line."
"IEC came prepared for this crisis. We doubled our fuels inventory," said Ron-Tal. "We may have survived the 2012 crisis, but there will still be a crisis at IEC in the summer of 2013. In April 2013, gas will begin coming from Tamar, and we should begin to switch back to gas. This will result in 40% of electricity being generated by gas next year, but remember that everything is coming via one pipeline. This is the least possible redundancy imaginable. I strongly hope that within a few years, we will strengthen this redundancy, because represents a potentially very severe electricity crisis, which I hope won't happen."
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on September 10, 2012
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