Investigation Starts with a Volt
// Prosecutor's Office begins questioning in the power company case
Electroshock
Anatoly Chubais, the chairman of RAO UES of Russia was questioned yesterday evening by officers of the Moscow Prosecutor's Office, which is investigating a criminal case of negligence and abuse of authority instituted in connection with the power blackout. Its consequences were mostly eliminated yesterday. The first theories as to why more than two million people were without electricity for almost 24 hours have appeared. Losses are being calculated. Chubais promised to compensate for damage if power consumers can prove it.
The Causes
The first theories as to the causes of the blackout appeared in RAO UES of Russia yesterday. Recall that a cascading failure of transformer substations, high-voltage lines, and power stations that affected Moscow and Moscow, Tula, Kaluga, and Ryazan regions occurred after an accident at Moscow's Chagino substation. The first, relatively small flare at Chagino occurred in the evening of May 23. The fire was quickly extinguished, but there was not enough time to eliminate the consequences. Exactly one day later, the substation again caught fire.
At 21:17 on Tuesday, a 110-kV transformer, one of six installed in a substation with 500-, 220- and 110-kV high-voltage lines leading to it, exploded from overheating. The other transformers, wreaths of suspended bus line insulation, air ducts, and switches were either destroyed or severely damaged by fragments of this transformer, red-hot oil pouring out of it, and a fire that burst out. The automatic safeguard shut off the units still in one piece, and the entire substation shut down.
As a result, as they explained at RAO UES of Russia, four units at Moscow's Cogeneration Plant 22 automatically shut off, since they were fed from Chagino through 220- and 110-kV overhead lines. Because of this, the power supply was disrupted in five Moscow districts – Marino, Lyublino, Pechatniki, Tekstilshchiki, and Kapotnya. Three large factories located in the Southeastern Administrative District also came to a standstill – the Moscow Oil Refinery, a cement plant, and a gypsum pasteboard factory.
Power company officials contend that the situation at the time was very serious but not disastrous. “We could have left everything as is,” one of the company's technical specialists told Kommersant. Five Moscow districts and three factories were without electricity for several hours while repairs were made and there was a big outcry. We could have taken a risk and at best, have avoided a scandal, and at worst, ended up with a chain reaction. RAO's regional dispatch control center had to make a decision.”
As they explained at the company, even in a critical situation, power company officials do not have the right to redistribute power flows or cut off power station units or consumers. The agent on duty at the regional dispatch control center, who reports to the main dispatch control center of the country's Unified Power System, does this for them. This person sits beside monitors and constantly views a map of the power flow distribution for the whole region, tracks the increase and decrease of loads at individual networks, and thus makes decisions in critical situations.
Why the regional dispatcher decided to keep supplying blacked-out Southeast Moscow from reserve sources will be determined only after members of a specially formed committee study his log. He was probably just afraid of leaving the Moscow Oil Refinery without electricity, because deenergizing it posed a threat of an explosion or ecological disaster owing to the peculiarities of the oil refining process cycle. For these considerations, electricity was supplied the same night to the oil refinery and the residential districts together.
“The oil refinery in Kapotnya is the largest consumer of power in the entire Southeastern District,” a RAO UES spokesman explained to Kommersant. “It uses electricity at a rate of about 600 million rubles a month.”
As a result, by five o'clock on Wednesday morning, the refinery, which is normally supplied with 220 kV from a high-capacity substation, had been “hung up” on the sole remaining 110-kV line at Chagino, which was rather weak for it. In addition, other consumers put a load on this line all night as well. About ten o'clock in the morning, the usual morning peak of electricity consumption began, and the last transformer at Chagino burned out. The entire load taken on by the Chagino substation was redistributed in one throw to the six remaining high-voltage substations located around Moscow and connected to one another. Some of them were unable to sustain the load and also shut off after the automatic safeguard was triggered. This was the start of a system-wide crisis.
The Explanations
Anatoly Chubais, the chairman of RAO UES of Russia, appeared in public yesterday afternoon at a meeting of the CIS Electric Power Council, of which he is a member. First of all, Chubais announced that as of 16:00, Moscow Region's power supply had been fully restored. He added that RAO UES of Russia was prepared to compensate for economic damage caused to consumers if they could prove it.
“All legislatively proven damage must be, and, of course, will be, compensated,” Chubais said.
Meanwhile, in the opinion of Aleksandr Remezov, the head of the City of Moscow's department of fuel and energy utilities, RAO UES of Russia's subsidiary, AO Mosenergo, bears more responsibility to consumers than RAO UES itself. “Mosenergo is responsible for the malfunctioning of the substation. Thus, Mosenergo is the source of the blackout,” Remezov told Kommersant.
Chubais gave his own theory of the cause of the blackout, noting that he had given his subordinates two weeks to make a detailed analysis of the situation. According to Chubais, there were two reasons: the accident at the substation and the fire, which caused the wires to sag, and as a consequence of this, the automatic safeguards cut them off. “If it had been only the substation, we could have coped with the situation. But this is only a preliminary assessment, of course,” Chubais noted. It is notable that Chubais never once mentioned that the Moscow substation was severely overloaded and in a deteriorated condition. But as Remezov said to Kommersant, “there was nothing technically unexpected in the accident that occurred. The Chagino substation is only a direct reflection of the technical condition of all of Moscow's susbstations.”
Participants at the Power Council meeting supported Chubais in any way they could. “No country in the world is secured from similar blackouts, said Areg Galstian, Armenia's deputy minister of energy; and Evgeny Mishchuk, the secretary of the Power Council's executive committee, praised RAO personnel for their efficiency in eliminating the consequences of the blackout. Chubais agreed with him, saying that “Mosenergo, Tulaenergo, and the system operator performed their work responsibly, and I have no criticisms in this regard.” Meanwhile, as Chubais was speaking with journalists, they were waiting for him at the Moscow Prosecutor's Office, claiming that the possibility of postponing the examination of the RAO UES chairman scheduled for 16:00 had not been discussed. “There has been no discussion with Chubais on this matter,” said Sergey Marchenko, the press secretary of the Moscow Prosecutor's Office. Chubais himself said he couldn't make it to the examination before 19:00. He explained the delay by the need to hold a meeting at 18:30 of the operations staff responsible for eliminating the consequences of the power crisis. This was where he went after the end of the Power Council meeting, saying, “Prosecutor, you have my word. Rest assured that we'll find the time for mutual understanding without any problems.” In response to a question about the possibility of his dismissal, Chubais noted that the company's shareholders, which included the state, must make this decision.
The Examination
Chubais never appeared at the Moscow Prosecutor's Office yesterday. At 20:10, Marchenko came out to journalists awaiting Chubais' arrival and said that the examination had already started, but was being conducted at the Zamoskvoretskaia district prosecutor's office on Tatarskaia Street. Andrey Trapeznikov, a member of RAO UES of Russia's management board, soon came to the journalists who had moved there. He talked about what his boss had been doing that day and what measures the company was taking to eliminate the consequences of the blackout.
“A committee has been set up at RAO to evaluate the actions of the management of various subdivisions and levels the day before the blackout, when the accident occurred, and during elimination of the consequences,” Trapeznikov said.
When journalists asked him if there had been external influence at the substation, Trapeznikov said “I would suggest waiting for the results of the investigation.”
“Do you think the criminal case could be connected with politics?”, one of the journalists asked him.
“No, I don't think so,” he said. “The Prosecutor's Office is acting according to the law.”
Kommersant has learned that the case in which Chubais was being questioned falls within the jurisdiction of the economic crimes department of the Moscow Prosecutor's Office. In 1997, investigators from this same department conducted the so-called writers' case, which also involved Chubais [see the reference below]. But none of these investigators work in the department anymore. And according to Kommersant's information, the people who replaced them were planning to question Chubais about how operations at the Chagino substation were organize, who was responsible for what there, and how all the substation's units were checked. “We'll see how the talk goes; there will probably be questions during the conversation. Maybe Chubais won't admit his guilt and will say others were responsible for Chagino. Then there'll be more people to question, and maybe we'll find the first guilty parties,” they said in the department. The examination ended in late evening. Kommersant will report on the results in the next issue.
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Who Was Responsible for Power Blackouts in the Rest of the World
On March 31, 1999, the municipal services committee of the State of California published the results of an investigation of a blackout of the electricity supply network in San Francisco on December 8, 1998, when 940,000 residents were left without power. A “breach of labor discipline” by Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) employees was given as the main cause. The company was obliged to improve the system of employee supervision. In May 1999, PG&E signed an agreement settling claims and paying $440,000 in fines to the government. PG&E paid another $7.3 million in compensation against lawsuits from companies and citizens.
The power company Consolidated Edison, which serves New York, was named as the offender in a blackout on July 6, 1999, that left 200,000 Manhattan residents without power for 19 hours. The company did not incur legal liability, but it paid nearly $2 million on more than a thousand lawsuits from companies, private individuals, and governments.
On July 19, 2002, Geidar Aliev, the president of Azerbaijan, reprimanded Etibar Pirverdiev, the head of the state company Azerenerzhi, for an accident on July 13 that left Baku without electricity for a day. Aliev publicly accused Pirverdiev of being incompetent to manage the sphere entrusted to him. No other practical conclusions were made.
On September 3, 2003, Mexican President Vicente Fox fired Energy Minister Ernesto Martinez after a power blackout on the Yucatan Peninsula the day before left 4.5 million Mexicans without power; the Cancun international resort was without power, and production came to a halt at fields producing 80 percent of Mexico's oil. In making his decision, the president did not even take into account the fact that the blackout was cause by a lightning strike at one of the susbstations.
On April 5, 2004, an investigative committee published a report on the causes of the blackout in the United States and Canada on August 14, 2003, which affected more than 50 million people. No specific culprits were named. In the committee's opinion, the disaster was the result of a number of factors, including errors, negligence, computer miscalculations, failure to observe safety requirement, poor coordination, and general aging of the North America's unified power system. In the committee's opinion, the main causes of the blackout were violations committed by FirstEnergy Corp. It was ordered to improve labor organization. Private individuals and a number of companies filed a group lawsuit against FirstEnergy, under which the company paid $17.9 million.
The Chilean power supply system operators Transelec and CDEC-SIC paid a fine of $6 million for an accident at Chile's central electric power station that left 600,000 Santiago residents without power. It was discovered that the companies did not coordinate their actions when one of the generators shut down.
Who Was Responsible for Power Blackouts in Russia
A special committee of RAO UES investigated an accident in the Ural power system on September 9, 2000. As a result of a malfunction, the unit of the Beloyarsk Nuclear Power Plant automatically stopped, and electricity was cut off to some consumers in the region for an hour. Personnel at the Novo-Sverdlovsk Cogeneration Plant were the main culprits in the initial accident, while employees of the nuclear power plant were blamed for the emergency. Several people were disciplined.
Based on the results of an investigation of a power outage in the city of Berezovsky in Kemerovo Region on September 6, 2001, a committee of Kuzbassenergo established that technological violations (resulting in a short circuit, wire burnout, oil ejection, and emergency cutoff) by electricians at Severokuzbassugol, not Kuzbassenergo employees, were responsible. The committee recommended the following as punishment measures: “recertify the guilty parties, organize unscheduled instruction and extra emergency training.”
On October 5, 2003, a power unit of the Kashirskaya Regional Power Plant shut down when oil ignited. Automatic safeguards shut off the other five units. Nearly 20,000 residents of the town of Kashira-2 were left without heat and hot water. The committee investigating the accident discovered that the cause of the damage to the power unit was a defect in the generator. One of the power plant's managers was pensioned off.
There was an active investigation of a power blackout at the Nizhny Novgorod Airport on the night of November 15, 2005. A committee of the Ministry of Transport and the Federal Air Transport Agency arrived to conduct it. Regional leaders declared loudly that they intended to seek the harshest possible measures against the offenders. The Nizhny Novogorod Region Prosecutor's Office even instituted a case of administrative infringement under Article 9.11 of the Administrative Code of the RF (violation of the regulations for operating electrical installations). However, the case was closed for lack of serious consequences and major damage. Three airport electricians got off with fines and reprimands.
The Audit Chamber Will Audit RAO UES of Russia
According to RIA Novosti, Sergey Stepashin, the chairman of the RF Audit Chamber, said that, for the first time, the chamber would audit the true technical condition of the country's power industry in connection with the power crisis. “I think we will first try to analyze the true technical condition of our power industry,” Stepashin said. In his words, the chamber will also examine what funds were allocated for maintaining the equipment in working order. “We audit RAO UES annually,” Stepashin said, noting that this company was the country's largest budget recipient and enormous budgetary funds were concentrated in it. During the audit we will conduct now, we will definitely be concentrating on operational questions and financing,” Stepashin said.
The State Duma Joins the Chubais Case
Yesterday, Duma Speaker Boris Gryzlov did not rule out the possibility that parliament will conduct its own investigation of the causes of the accident at he Chagino substation. “We may consider forming a working group dedicated to clarifying previous decision on reforming the industry,” Gryzlov said after a meeting of the chamber's council. “The group may calculate additional fund from the budget for this industry. We may have to start a parliamentary investigation.” At the same time, Gryzlov said it was premature to speak of Chubais' early dismissal. “This is not a decision that should be based on emotions.”
Nevertheless, the Motherland (Rodina) faction tabled a draft resolution in the Duma yesterday demanding Chubais' early dismissal at a meeting of RAO UES shareholders, asked the president and the government to suspend power industry reform, and ordered the Audit Chamber to audit the company's financial and economic activities when it was under Chubais' direction. Despite the fact that the chamber's council refused yesterday to put this document on the agenda of today's plenary meeting, Dmitry Rogozin, the leader of Motherland, said he intended to submit the draft “by ear”. “We have repeatedly said that Chubais is a rotten manager,” Rogozin explained. “We won't accept his apologies. The only apology is his dismissal.” However, the council's refusal to put the draft on the agenda apparently means that for the time being the majority United Russia (Edinaya Rossiya) faction is not prepared to demand Chubais' dismissal.
Anatoly Chubais' Trips to the Prosecutor's Office
On February 6, 1997, The State Duma initiated a check of the legality of Chubais' earnings for 1996 in connection with information published in the media about large amounts of money received in his bank accounts. Based on the results of the check, Prosecutor General Yury Skuratov reported on April 9, 1997, that the Chubais earned the money in the period when he was not in government service and paid taxes of 517.2 million rubles on it.
In April 1997, First Deputy Prime Minister Chubais was questioned at the Prosecutor General's Office as a witness in the case of the ” Xerox box” containing $538 million, which Sergey Lisovsky and Arkady Evstafyev tried to carry out of the White House on June 19, 1996. The Moscow Prosecutor's Office instituted a case under Article 162 part 7 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR (Large-scale illegal currency transactions). However, the owners of the box could not be identified, and the case was closed on April 7, 1997.
In November 1997, Chubais was summoned to the Moscow Prosecutor's Office as a witness in the writers' case. The investigation began after publication of an article by Aleksandr Minkin in Novaya Gazeta on August 4, 1997, according to which ex-deputy prime minister and ex-head of the State Property Committee (Goskomimushchestvo), Alfred Kokh, received an advance of $100,000 from the Swiss company Servina Trading for the right to publish the book Privatization in Russia. During the investigation, it was discovered that a group of authors headed by Chubais had received $90,000 each for writing the book privatization. Chubais' coauthors lost their government jobs, while he lost his job as finance minister, although he remained as deputy prime minister. The case was closed under an amnesty in December 1998.
In March 2001, Chubais gave testimony to the Prosecutor General's Office as a witness in a case against the Nizhny Novgorod regional administration on charges of erroneous transfer in November 1994 of $2 million by the Bank of new York to Nizhegorodets Bank (Nizhny Novgorod). In order to return the Nizhegorodets funds already spent, the regional administration instructed ZAO Nizhegorodskaya Yarmarka to take out a loan from Inkombank on the security of the building of the state-owned company Nizhpoligraf. Chubais, who was then head of the Ministry of State Property, gave permission for the security. The case is still under investigation.
Sergey Dyupin, Irina Rybalchenko, Aleksey Sokovin, Yury Senatorov; Suzanna Farizova
All the Article in Russian as of May 27, 2005
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