Texas freeze hits northern Mexico with $2.7 billion blackout (updated)
16/02/2021 20:22
(Adds details on impact to manufacturing sector)
By Sharay Angulo and Adriana Barrera
MEXICO CITY, Feb 16 (Reuters) - Factories across parts of
northern Mexico on Tuesday reported $2.7 billion in losses from
blackouts that extended to a second day on limited natural gas
supplies from Texas, where a rare winter freeze has left
millions of users without light or heat.
Rolling power cuts affected Chihuahua, Coahuila, Tamaulipas
and Nuevo Leon, national electricity grid operator CENACE said,
listing Mexican states that border Texas and have a heavy
industrial presence, from big-box consumer manufacturing to auto
and oil companies.
Later on Tuesday evening, 12 states farther south were to be
included in the rotating blackouts, including major auto
manufacturing centers Puebla and Guanajuato, the operator said.
Manufacturing lobby INDEX said 2,600 businesses were
affected, and that hourly losses for 800 of its members had
reached $200 million, including the costs of reactivating
production after restoring power.
In total, the output losses over two days amounted to $2.7
billion, said INDEX Director Luis Hernandez.
"We have to deal with that crisis," Arturo Gutiérrez, chief
executive of Nueva Leon-based bottling company Arca Continental,
said about the outage on a call with analysts.
In Matamoros, opposite Brownsville, Texas, not a single
company within the city's 90-member INDEX association was able
to operate for more than two or three hours on Tuesday, said
Rosalinda Torres, head of the group.
Chihuahua state was also hard hit, with 22 companies going
without power for more than 24 hours, said Roman Rivas, the head
of INDEX's Chihuahua chapter.
"Yesterday was practically a lost day for exports," he said.
About 4.7 million users in northern Mexico lost power on
Monday when cold weather froze pipelines and natural gas
deliveries from Texas slowed. The freeze knocked out electricity
for more than 2 million customers in Texas. urn:newsml:reuters.com:*:nL1N2KL119
Power had been restored to about 80% of users by Tuesday,
Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said. CENACE asked
users to cut back on non-essential energy consumption due to the
lack of fuel.
State electricity company CFE said about 1 million users in
northern Mexico were still without power.
Mexico imports large volumes of natural gas from the United
States amid a growing deficit in its own production. While
Mexico's costs have been traditionally low in the North American
gas market, they spiked in recent days due to weather-related
issues.
Mexico does not have a natural gas storage infrastructure,
which has left it vulnerable to supply cuts or weather
emergencies like the Texas cold snap.
CFE said on Monday it would shore up the system with
hydroelectric and coal generation, in addition to seeking
liquefied natural gas (LNG) to supplement slowed deliveries from
Texas.
(Reporting by Adriana Barrera, Noe Tores and Sharay Angulo;
Writing by Cassandra Garrison; Editing by Dave Graham, Bill
Berkrot and Peter Cooney)
((Cassandra.Garrison@thomsonreuters.com; +54 11 5830 7443;))