South America · Energy

An Argentine engineering company is in advanced talks to finish two long-stalled Venezuela hydroelectric projects, a deal that could pour up to 672 megawatts into a grid that limps along at around 40 percent of capacity, and which only became possible after Washington granted a special license.

Argentine Firm Moves to Revive Venezuela’s Stalled Power Dams. (Photo: Internet reproduction)

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A decade-old contract back from the dead

More than ten years ago, an Argentine firm called IMPSA signed a contract to build the turbines for two big hydropower dams in southern Venezuela. Then the project simply stopped. Venezuela’s state power company could not keep up the payments, United States sanctions made it hard to move money or equipment, and the gear IMPSA had already manufactured ended up sitting in a warehouse in Mendoza, Argentina, for years. The dams stayed half-finished, monuments to a broader collapse.

Now the company says it is close to bringing that contract back to life. Its president, Jorge Salcedo, told the news agency Reuters that roughly ninety percent of the technical and financial details are settled, and that the two sides are hammering out the final schedule for delivering the equipment and getting paid. IMPSA is no longer the Argentine state firm it once was; it is now owned by a United States investment fund, a detail that turns out to matter a great deal.

What the Venezuela hydroelectric plan would deliver

The two sites sit on the Lower Caroni river in the south of the country. At the Tocoma dam, also known as Manuel Piar, the deal would let IMPSA finally switch on two generating units that have never run. At the nearby Macagua plant, it would overhaul three units that have fallen out of service. Together the work would add up to 672 megawatts of capacity, and the company says close to sixty percent of the equipment for the larger Tocoma project is already built, which is why it believes the first two phases could be done in roughly fourteen to nineteen months.

For a sense of scale, Tocoma was originally designed to hold ten generating units and more than 2,000 megawatts in total, so even this revival only finishes a slice of the original dream. But in today’s Venezuela, every megawatt counts.

The American license that changed everything

The reason this is happening now comes down to a piece of paper from Washington. United States sanctions on Venezuela are wide-ranging, and they had effectively frozen any deal involving the country’s state companies. Earlier this year, the US Treasury office that administers sanctions granted IMPSA a license to export and install the turbines, carving out a legal path for exactly this kind of work. Because the firm is now American-owned, that license is the hinge on which the whole project turns.

For a foreign reader, this is the interesting part. It is a small, concrete example of business cautiously creeping back into Venezuela through narrow sanctions exemptions, rather than a blanket reopening. The deal does not signal that the country is suddenly open for business; it signals that specific, carefully licensed projects can move when the pieces line up.

A grid in crisis

The backdrop is a power system in deep trouble. Venezuela leans heavily on hydropower, and its grid is estimated to run at only about 40 percent of capacity. Years of missed maintenance and underinvestment have produced repeated nationwide blackouts, including a six-day outage in 2019 that paralysed water, phones and hospitals, and further waves of failures since. Adding new, reliable generation is therefore not a luxury but a basic economic need, since unreliable power is one of the biggest brakes on any recovery.

The timing also fits a wider shift. Venezuela’s legislature has been moving on a separate plan to open the collapsed power sector to private capital after more than fifteen years of state monopoly. The IMPSA deal is a practical, early sign of what that opening might look like in concrete terms: outside firms, working under tight legal conditions, putting steel and turbines back into a system that has been starved of both.

What to watch next

Nothing is final yet. The two sides still have to sign the formal addition to the contract, lock in the payment terms and begin shipping equipment that has waited years in storage. Any of those steps could slip, and doing business with a sanctioned state company is never simple, even with a license in hand. But if the deal closes, it would mark Venezuela’s first meaningful gain in power capacity in years, and a quiet milestone in the slow, conditional return of foreign investment to one of Latin America’s most troubled economies.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the IMPSA-Venezuela deal?

It is a renegotiation of a decade-old contract for the Argentine firm IMPSA to finish and repair turbines at two hydropower dams in southern Venezuela, Tocoma and Macagua. The work would add up to 672 megawatts to the national grid.

Why was the project stalled?

Venezuela’s state power company fell behind on payments, and United States sanctions made it hard to move money and equipment. The turbines IMPSA had already built sat in storage in Argentina for years.

Why can it move forward now?

A United States license granted earlier this year lets IMPSA, now American-owned, export and install the equipment despite sanctions. The company says about ninety percent of the technical and financial terms are already agreed.

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