Venezuela Slowly Powers Up After Claiming ‘Sabotage’ of Grid

(Bloomberg) — Venezuela’s electric supply is being reestablished after a 12-hour blackout that hit all the nation’s 24 states early on Friday, President Nicolás Maduro said on state television.

Most Read from Bloomberg

Authorities are investigating the alleged attack on the Guri hydroelectric plant transmission systems in southeastern Venezuela after the power outage, Maduro said. Measures taken after a previous 2019 attack worked to protect Guri, the main source of the country’s electricity, according to Maduro.

Power had already returned to all of Caracas by the time Maduro addressed the country, according to previous remarks by the city’s Mayor Carmen Melendez.

As electricity returned in some areas of the capital on Friday afternoon, much of the country remained without power. The metro was still out of service and lines formed outside of fuel stations as Venezuelans braced for the worst.

The outage came amid a weeks-long power struggle, with the opposition’s Edmundo González claiming an overwhelming victory over Maduro, who the electoral authority declared reelected for a third consecutive term in a July vote.

Earlier in the day, Maduro blamed the power failure on “desperate attacks from fascists” in his Telegram channel. Information Minister Freddy Ñañez said the government had activated its “anti-coup protocols” to fight “sabotage from extreme-right powers.”

Outages worsened after 2019 when a massive blackout darkened Venezuela for nearly a week following years of state mismanagement and underfunding of its enormous hydroelectric dams. State-enforced power rationing has been common since, especially in rural regions outside Caracas.

Opposition leader González was summoned to the attorney general’s office on Friday for a third time over the uploading of voting records that appeared to show he won the July 28 presidential election by a landslide. Neither González nor Attorney General Tarek William Saab confirmed whether his appearance had been postponed due to the blackout.

–With assistance from Andreina Itriago Acosta.

(Updates with Maduro comments starting first paragraph, Melendez comments in third paragraph)