From Crisis to Stability in the Armenian Power Sector : Lessons Learned from Armenia's Energy Reform Experience
In the wake of the Soviet Union's collapse, Armenia, like other former Soviet republics, began to struggle with the implications of its newfound independence. In the electricity sector, this meant learning how to manage and sustain a fragment...
| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | Publication |
| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
Washington, DC: World Bank
2012
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2006/01/6638103/crisis-stability-armenian-power-sector-lessons-learned-armenias-energy-reform-experience http://hdl.handle.net/10986/6987 |
| Summary: | In the wake of the Soviet Union's
collapse, Armenia, like other former Soviet republics, began
to struggle with the implications of its newfound
independence. In the electricity sector, this meant learning
how to manage and sustain a fragment of a system that had
never been designed to function as a stand-alone grid.
Armenia's electricity system-and, indeed, its entire
energy supply system-had been designed to operate as part of
a much larger, integrated Trans-Caucasus system. Plants were
built to run on fuel imported from thousands of miles away,
from neighbors who, with the Soviet Union gone, could offer
little certainty that such supply would continue under terms
that Armenia could afford. The problems with this system
began to show in 1992. The start of the war over Nagorno
Karabakh, and the resulting imposition by Azerbaijan and
Turkey of an economic blockade, cut off Armenia's only
source of gas and oil for its thermal plants. Four years
prior to that, a massive earthquake had forced a shut down
of the Medzamor nuclear power plant, a source of roughly
one-third of Armenia's generating capacity. Supply from
a new gas pipeline, built in 1993 through neighboring
Georgia, was regularly interrupted by acts of sabotage.
Armenia was left to rely almost entirely on its hydropower
resources, at great expense to Lake Sevan, one of the
country's most precious natural resources. |
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