San Luis Potosi, SLP (February 20, 2021).- Around 400 companies, of the 500 that are established in the San Luis Potosí Industrial Zone, are being affected in their production processes due to the lack of natural gas, this as a result of the Texas government’s ban in the United States to export this energy to other regions, given the climatic conditions that prevail there.
In an interview, the president of the Union of Users of the Industrial Zone of San Luis Potosi (UUZI), Ricardo Pérez Castillo, reported that due to this situation, a large part of the affected companies went into temporary technical strike, hoping that weather conditions may improve in Texas this weekend so that natural gas fueling processes can be restored.
The businessman explained that the industry depends on two inputs that are essential, electricity and natural gas, especially for temperature processes, such as baking, painting, heat treatment, metallurgical, pre-heating, even some industries generate their own energy using natural gas.
In the case of electricity, there is no problem because CENACE has guaranteed the supply of electricity without any problem, and so far they have not suffered any blackout; But with natural gas, there is a restriction on the percentage of use, since Naturgy, which is the main supplier of natural gas, has indicated that they can only use 20 percent (in some cases 30 percent) of the quota assigned to the plants, and this obviously affected 80 percent of the companies in San Luis Potosí.
Pérez Castillo concluded: “This situation exhibited many deficiencies in the management of energy policies by Mexico’s Federal Government, it would be a good thing to make the necessary adjustments at the Federal level. It is absurd that Mexico does not have a natural gas storage capacity, in fact, an event of this type could have been solved with a minimum reserve of natural gas”.
Source: OEM
