Reflections
by comrade Fidel
WE ARE AND WE SHOULD BE SOCIALISTS
Last October 2nd we
discussed the international price of our fuel consumption. I am under the
impression that its significance attracted the attention of many leaders and
cadres.
There is a general debate about the
percentage of the population with access to electricity and other common
services in modern life. This may vary from 40% or lower to 60% or a bit
higher. It depends on the access to hydroelectric resources and other elements.
Before January 1st, 1959,
almost half of the Cuban people had no access to electricity. Today, with a
population twice the size and a wide access to that energy, its consumption has
increased several times over.
In our country, as in a large part
of the world --except for the super-rich
nations-- that electricity is brought to
the people by air using electricity pylons, posts, transformers and other
means, many of which were turned down by the strong winds of hurricanes Gustav
and Ike throughout the island.
An article in Granma signed by Maria Julia Mayoral outlines the devastation of
the power grid by both natural phenomena. But, she adds that while the
hurricanes were crossing the power generators provided electricity to “966
bakeries, 207 food processing centers, 372 radio stations, 193 hospitals, 496
policlinics, 635 water-pumping stations, 138 senior citizens homes, among other
basic facilities.”
“This means that…it was necessary to
take down hundreds of emergency equipment located in production and services
centers to set them up quickly in places unconnected to the National Energy
Service. This was made possible by the coordinated action of the dismantling
brigades of various state institutions and transportation companies with the
support of local authorities. The means provisionally moved will be returned to
their original centers as soon as the situation is back to normal.”
The words that I have literally
taken from the original text show the devotion of Party and Government cadres,
both national and local, to finding solutions.
The heading of the article written
by Maria Julia reads: A Fortune is Spent
to Bring Light to the People.
I think this is the right time to
recall that the power generators were set up with the following purposes:
·
To secure
crucial services such as healthcare or food preservation under any
circumstances;
·
To secure such
industrial productions as bread, milk and others;
·
To secure steel
smelting whose interruption would seriously damage the industry;
·
To guarantee
defense services and public information which are indispensable at all times,
such as the weather bureaus and their radars that follow the hurricanes’ path;
·
To ensure the
progressive generation of electricity with minimum consumption, much more
efficiently than the available thermal plants.
Having said this, we should remember that the power
generators are of different sizes, from those with small engines that can
produce 40 KW/h or less up to those generating over 1,000 KW/h. Sometimes it
becomes necessary to put together several of these engines, for example, in a
hospital with advanced technological equipment and an indispensable air
conditioning system which are high energy consumers.
These engines operate with diesel
and their efficiency grows as their capacity for electricity generation
increases to a certain point. They require a certain type of grease, a stock of
spare parts, maintenance, etc.
A growing number of power generators are made up by
uninterrupted energy-producing engines which use another fuel.
The ideal thing would be for each of the
abovementioned production or services units to receive electricity from the
National Energy System. This is produced with more efficient equipment working
on fuel oil, which is less expensive than diesel, obtained from oil refining, a
fuel increasingly used for transportation of passengers and cargo, tractors and
other farming equipment.
If for whatever reasons the power generators that
operate with diesel are used to produce electricity for houses and placed under
a 20 hours operation regime this can have a negative impact. This equipment has
been intended for emergencies and, under
Among the hydrocarbon consuming generators nothing
compares with the sets of power generators that operate on fuel oil, even if
the investment is more costly. Due to their weight and complexity, they cannot
be moved from one place to another at will. In this sense, it is second only to
the combined cycle plants that use gas, previously cleaned of sulfur and other
contaminants.
We should be mindful that no cadre
forgets the advisability of not wasting a minute to return all the diesel
consuming engines to their specific function in the neighboring provinces and
municipalities as soon as the emergency is over. There is a serious deficit of
that fuel; the country spends too much and it has been necessary to reduce the demanded
allocations.
I insist that the production and
distribution of food and construction materials are absolutely prioritized at
the moment. We are not a developed capitalist country in a crisis, one whose
leaders go insane looking for solutions amidst a depression, inflation, a lack
of markets and unemployment; we are and we should be socialists.
Fidel Castro Ruz
October 4, 2008
7:35 p.m.