Lights out

AT 7.30pm it is pitch dark at the Orinokia shopping centre in Puerto Ordaz, in eastern Venezuela. The mall, one of the biggest in Latin America, would normally be floodlit and open until 9pm. But under a new edict from Venezuela’s government, shopping centres must close by seven. That is one of a number of measures the country’s populist regime has taken to cope with crippling power shortages. It has instigated scheduled four-hour rolling power cuts across the country, which in some areas have lasted for days. Civil servants have been told to work just two days a week. Clocks have been moved forward by half an hour, ending the Venezuela-only time zone introduced by the late Hugo Chávez, the country’s leader from 1999 to 2013. The remedy for the energy crisis, the government seems to be telling its citizens, is to do as little as possible.

For residents of Puerto Ordaz, Venezuela’s only planned city, power shortages seem like a bad joke. It was founded in the 1950s with the idea that cheap hydroelectric power would fuel industries that would make the country less dependent on oil exports. The city lies downstream from the Guri hydroelectric plant, the fourth-largest in the world, which provides around two-fifths of Venezuela’s electricity. But the reservoir is running dry. The water level is less than two metres from its “catastrophe” point, at which the generator must be switched off to avoid damaging its turbines. Unless it rains, Venezuela could be plunged into darkness within a matter of weeks.