Sunday, July 16, 2006

Lights Out Over Kosovo

Yesterday the power went out Kosovo-wide for nearly nine hours in most locations.  Gracanica was without power for 12 hours and then continued to have power outages throughout the night and today.  It is rumored that the Kosovo-B plant went down.  But there are also rumors in the local media that KEK (Kosovo Electric Kompany - or Krappy Electric Kompany as I like to call them!) has been selling power to Albania, Serbia, and Montenegro.  A KEK spokesperson denied those rumors stating that Kosovo-A was producing enough power to supply the province and they were not selling power but repaying power that is owed the neighboring countries (is that much different?!)  The spokesperson stated that it would take 13-14 hours before power stabalized but as we've seen, it is taking longer than that.  Local politicians, especially the Minister of Mining and Energy are blaming the problems on the mismanagement of KEK by Irish company ESBI.  It looks from the media reports that the ABC scheduling may return.