2024-03-03 11:48:54
The freezing of permits for Incorporating new customers into the natural gas network in the mountain region has been going on for 20 months and we anticipate a new winter full of difficulties for the thousands of potential users. who must resort to other alternatives to provide heating, hot water and to cook food.
This imposition alters the daily lives of families waiting for the unfinished works in the transportation system that brings the fluid to Bariloche, El Bolsón and other towns in western Neuquén and Chubut.
The efforts and claims to unblock the ban until now have turned out to be useless and not even the protection presented more than a year ago in the Federal Court had any effect. This action has the Camuzzi company as the main target, but with the national State as “co-responsible.” as decided by Judge Gustavo Villanueva, who never went further or resolved “the underlying issue.”
The hardships of the Waiting users multiply day by day and the concern is even greater when everyone assumes that another winter without natural gas awaits them around the corner.. For many, the third in series.
Supplying this service with firewood, electricity and bottled gas is between five and ten times more expensive. The strategies to deal with cost overruns are very varied. Pablo Kaferzicki lives with his family in Dina Huapi, in a house that They built it with all the enthusiasm, which they opened last year and that includes a “giant investment” in a central boiler that they cannot use.
The decision they made is concentrate for now on the ground floor of the property and leave the upper rooms unoccupied, because they cannot be heated. That is, they use half the house to save.
Others gather firewood wherever they can, even if it is of poor quality, because prices have skyrocketed, as have shipping costs, and it is impossible to supply only at the woodsheds. The same happens with the sought-after ten kilo bottle, which with the devaluation and deregulatory measures imposed by the current government cost 10,500 pesos, double what it cost in December.
Camila Bendersky was also able to build her house with great effort in the Entre Cerros neighborhood, near Lake Gutiérrez, where she lives with her partner and two small children. She said that The gas pipe passes through the door of his house, but he cannot connect because Camuzzi denies the “feasibility.”
He assured that the last winter for them was “very hard,” because they heat with wood, and the logistics of that input are not easy to manage because “it is always humid, it runs out at the worst moment and you have to charge the stove all the time.” to have a tolerable temperature.” The result is that she and her family became accustomed to living wrapped up in jackets even inside the house.
Bendersky said that at last year’s values He spent between 30,000 and 40,000 pesos per month on firewood, to which he had to add electricity bills of 12,000 pesos. (because they used an electric stove as reinforcement), plus one carafe per week for cooking.
Accumulated complications
Other testimonies are equally compelling. With the house opened before last winter, in the Dos Valles neighborhood, Eric Guerrero and his family had to assume that the natural gas stoves and all the installation that he had made for that purpose would remain idle without deadlines. Without thinking much, They ran to buy a wood stove and several electric ones to provide heat.
They also verified how complex it is to handle bottles, not only because of the cost, but because “they always run out at the worst time.” Bottle demanders also face the extra difficulty of obtaining empty containers to start the rotation. They are increasingly scarce and cost no less than 50 thousand pesos. It is equally or more difficult to get a 45 kilo gas cylinder, whose recharge today cannot be obtained for less than 58,000 pesos. A year ago it cost 11,000.
“We are already resigned to spending another winter without gas, we have to take a lot of precautions to keep the house warm and the values are very high,” Guerrero complained. In your case, the situation is aggravated by the heavy investment made in a facility suitable for natural gas that you cannot use for now. He explained that while he was doing the house he filed the required papers in Camuzzi and no one warned him that he would not be able to access the gas connection. “I don’t know why they don’t warn more clearly. Now they tell you that this is going to continue like this, and without deadlines,” he lamented.
The neighbors on both sides have gas, but Guerrero did not arrive in time. They insisted that they have the work done and everything presented, but Camuzzi tells them no.
Their drama is that of many who build their homes, with the necessary investment to install gas, including heaters or boilers, at a cost that is measured in millions of pesos.
The registered gas technician Patricia Carriqueo said that “Low-income people, if they are building their house, postpone that investment,” But she and her peers have not stopped working because “those in the middle and upper middle class have not. They do it the same way, even though she serves it to them immediately, so they don’t have to break the house later. Likewise, among the latter, there is no shortage of regretters, because the deadlines to receive the long-awaited network gas are stretched much longer than expected.
For Pablo Kaferzycki “everything is very illogical” and the only way to get closer to a possible solution is to make it public. “That is why we come together and that is why we try to spread our fight through all means,” he argued. TMains gas energy is not a privilege or a luxury, it is a right. “We live in a very difficult area.”
The long saga of “the compressors”
The suspension of new “feasibility” began in July 2022. Between 2014 and 2019 there was a similar blockade, which was resolved with the expansion of the Cordilleran-Patagonian gas pipeline system. But the opening lasted only a few years, because the investment was never completed.
We are already resigned to spending another winter without gas, we have to take a lot of precautions to keep the house warm and the values are very high. They say that this will continue like this, and without deadlines.
Eric Guerrero, resident of the Dos Valles neighborhood of Bariloche.
Since then, the word “compressors” has been repeated in the nightmares of thousands of frustrated applicants to access the service.. This is because the location of a gas compressor in the Chubut town of Gobernador Costa and two others in Río Senguerr are the missing works. -as officials say and repeat- to increase the pressure in the pipes and meet the postponed demand.
The ban imposed by Camuzzi was slow to raise dust. Municipal and provincial governments did not immediately address the problem faced by home users who were denied gas, and even commercial and industrial enterprises, faced with the same limitation.
The reaction of some disappointed front members was to organize themselves into email or WhatsApp chains through which the little available information circulated. They were contacted by the consumer defense organization Codec, which in December presented a collective protection to demand solutions.
The equipment to be installed in Chubut has been purchased but the civil works, which came to have a contract and an executing company, it never materialized.
During the presidency of Alberto Fernández there was no progress by the national government to execute the work, which represents no more than 2% of the complete investment started almost a decade ago with the expansion of the gas pipelines. Since Milei took over, there have been even fewer signs, except for the release of fees, which made some excited about the possibility of Camuzzi assuming the investment on his own.
The provinces also evaluated this possibility and There is a firm promise from the governor of Chubut, Ignacio Torres, to install at least one of the compressors with his own resources.
The president of Codec, Pablo Chamatrópulos, said that the greatest responsibility lies with Camuzzi “even though she was exempt from investments when they did not give her a rate,” but he also charged against the Federal Justice. He criticized that the judge in charge “takes almost two years to define an amparo, when there are 15,000 victims.” He said that “The universal understanding of consumer rights” is still in a very primary stage in the country and “it is time to point out what is happening.”
Refilling a 45 kilo gas cylinder today cannot be achieved for less than 58,000 pesos. A year ago this renovation cost 11,000 pesos.
Explanations from the distribution company
The appearance of the feared “conditional feasibility” seal that Camuzzi began to stamp on home works files in July 2022 with the agreement of the regulatory body It is justified by the shortage of gas to satisfy global demand.
Actually, the explanation is that the volume of fuel that llega to the region would be enough to provide service to current clients and new ones who are currently waiting for a good part of the year. QBut the system would collapse in the coldest moments of winter.
In other words, the excess demand that occurs no more than 10 or 15 days a year is sufficient reason to deny new connections. Else Outages or pressure drops could occur that the company is prohibited by contract, at the risk of suffering heavy penalties.
The head of institutional relations at Camuzzi, Rodrigo Espinosa, said that “In fact, the competence and responsibility for the work of the compressors lies with the national State, the client who tendered the work.”. At first the management was in charge of the Ministry of Energy and then it passed to the Enarsa company.
Espinosa said that “the registered gas operators already know” that the feasibility was stopped and some “are moving forward with the procedures to a certain point,” but They must wait for final inspection and connection to service. He confirmed that, despite the impatience of many, “there is no possibility of giving answers before winter.”
Asked about the number of potential users waiting, he said that the waiting procedures that the company accumulates are about 2,600 in Bariloche and the entire region, but “the universe of plaintiffs must be much larger,” because many know of the restriction and do not even carry out the work or present papers until the income is released.
The applicants themselves speak of 15,000 potential users, 5,000 of them in Bariloche, many of which have gas passing through their paths. The gas company Carriqueo said that Camuzzi even has the “expansions” cut off, that is, the extensions for new devices within a property with an already enabled meter.
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