{"id":27296,"date":"2017-10-26T16:52:54","date_gmt":"2017-10-26T21:52:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=27296"},"modified":"2017-10-26T16:52:54","modified_gmt":"2017-10-26T21:52:54","slug":"disaster-capitalists-take-big-step-toward-privatizing-puerto-ricos-electric-grid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=27296","title":{"rendered":"Disaster Capitalists Take Big Step Toward Privatizing Puerto Rico’s Electric Grid"},"content":{"rendered":"
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DISASTER CAPITALISTS TAKE BIG STEP TOWARD PRIVATIZING PUERTO RICO\u2019S ELECTRIC GRID<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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THE BOARD THAT<\/u> oversees Puerto Rico\u2019s finances has taken its most conspicuous step toward privatizing the island\u2019s power grid, a long sought-after prize that has been put on a plate by Hurricane Maria.<\/p>\n

The federally appointed control board announced<\/a> that it intends to putthe Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority, or Prepa \u2014 the island\u2019s sole, beleaguered power utility \u2014\u00a0under the direction of an emergency manager.<\/p>\n

That manager will be Noel Zamot, who will become Prepa\u2019s \u201cchief transformation officer.\u201d Zamot, who is Puerto Rican, is a known entity to the control board. It appointed him this summer to serve on its executive committee as the revitalization coordinator. His role mainly involved attracting private investment under Title V of PROMESA, a provision allowing for an expedited social and environmental review of major infrastructure projects. Since that time, he\u2019s been in charge of something called the Critical Projects Process<\/a>, soliciting proposals from a slew of private actors. As of mid-September, Zamot had fielded 12 proposals according to his Twitter<\/a>, many of which have to do with energy infrastructure.<\/p>\n

His first job will be\u00a0to help return electricity to around 80 percent of Puerto Ricans still without power following the storm. His second could be turning that power over to private hands, a pattern described by The Intercept\u2019s Naomi Klein as the \u201cshock doctrine.<\/a>\u201d<\/p>\n

Months before either hurricanes Maria or Irma struck, the board had been enthusiastic about the prospect of privatizing Prepa, which is $9 billion in debt. Oversight board chair Jos\u00e9 B. Carri\u00f3n III was explicit about one of Zamot\u2019s main goals shortly after<\/a> he was brought on: to \u201cprivatize the Electric Power Authority as soon as possible,\u201d as he told the Puerto Rican newspaper Metro at the end of August.<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Photo: Xavier Garcia\/Bloomberg News\/Getty Images DISASTER CAPITALISTS TAKE BIG STEP TOWARD PRIVATIZING PUERTO RICO\u2019S ELECTRIC GRID THE BOARD THAT oversees Puerto Rico\u2019s finances has taken its most conspicuous step toward privatizing the island\u2019s power grid, a long sought-after prize that has been put on a plate by Hurricane Maria. The federally appointed control board announced […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2873,16307,3824,5567],"class_list":["post-27296","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-disaster-capitalism","tag-kate-aronoff","tag-puerto-rico","tag-the-intercept"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27296","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=27296"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27296\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27297,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27296\/revisions\/27297"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}