Jim Stone, Freelance Journalist
http://82.221.129.208/.xo5.html
UPDATE TO BELOW: AS I PREDICTED IN EARLIER POSTS, MOST OF VENEZUELA IS WITHOUT POWER THIS MORNING BECAUSE A VIRUS OVER SPUN THE TURBINES AT GURI AND BLEW THE ENTIRE GRID UP. POMPEO BASICALLY ADMITTED THE U.S. DID IT.
GAME OVER VENEZUELA. Here's what's going to happen now. All the oldest mothballed stuff Venezuela has is now going to be brought out of mothball and run, because that's all there is left that might be ready to go right away. There will continue to be a blackout for a week or more, after which power will somewhat resume with a total capacity of between 50 percent and 70 percent of what Venezuela had previously. This will mean permanent rolling blackouts for over a year, IF no more attacks take place.
Here is the key Pompeo quote that says it ALL:
No food. No medicine. Now, no power. Next, no Maduro.
MY TRANSLATION: "WE CAME, WE SAW, HE DIED. HA HA HA HA HA. The world's largest proven oil reserves will now be OURS!!!
Update to below:
I re-traced steps looking for the tweets that said the generators went "off frequency" at Guri and can't find them anymore. There is censorship underway. If the generators did go off frequency, power will not be back up to all of venezuela any time soon. Such an event would likely permanently destroy anywhere from 30 - 50 percent of generating capacity in one whack. UPDATE: I just got all the stats. If the generators at Guri were over-spun on purpose to put them out of phase and blow other power facilities up elsewhere (plus at Guri, whoever wins the out of phase battle) the damage will amount to 40 percent of Venezuela's electrical capacity being wiped out for about five years. The types of generators Venezuela would have lost can't be replaced within a year, even without sanctions. My guess is that the news will now be continuously full of reports about how bad venezuela's electrical system is, all reports blaming Maduro.
If that happens, the following report is going to stand the test of time, if Venezuela now goes into continuous rolling blackouts that never stop, here is the reason:
UPDATE TO BELOW: I AM CALLING IT: THE POWER OUTAGE IN VENEZUELA WAS CAUSED BY A STUXNET TYPE OF ATTACK ON AN ENORMOUS HYDROELECTRIC FACILITY
I likely know EXPLICITLY what happened based on posts Venezuelans managed to get onto Twitter, and here it is:
Someone from either American or Israeli DOD got into the PLC controllers on the hydroelectric Guri Dam. They attacked the systems that regulated water flow through the valves on the dam that send the water to the turbines. This is precisely the type of attack Stuxnet is supposed to be made for. They opened the valves all the way. They (or whatever virus they planted, probably Stuxnet) then told the engineers, via the readouts, that the water flows and turbine speeds were normal. With an enormous amount of pressure from the dam, the turbines managed to push ahead of phase on the rest of Venezuela's grid, got into an enormous tug-of-war with power stations elsewhere and blew everything up, tripping a nationwide blackout.
Since people at Guri have stated that they had a runaway problem with the turbines, where they pushed ahead of phase and that's what triggered the blackout, a virus or other cyber attack is assumed. It is safe to assume this because once a power station is locked into the grid, it stays locked into the grid come hell (but not high water, ) - water, which in this case had enough pressure to force the generators to spin ahead of phase no matter what once the valves were simply totally open, controlling nothing. Once the generators were more than 20 degrees ahead of phase, everything would have absolutely no choice whatsoever to do anything but go kablooey. After that, pure destruction would commence. VENEZUELA WAS ATTACKED, this could not have happened any other way, case closed.