China Machinery Engineering Corp. plans to switch on a 600-megawatt, oil-fired unit next month at the sprawling Planta Centro complex, according to people familiar with the matter, who asked not to be identified because the matter isn’t public. The company is working on the plant under a contract dating back to the presidency of the late Hugo Chávez.
Restarting Venezuela’s largest fossil fuel-burning plant will help ease chronic blackouts that have worsened since earthquakes ravaged the region in June. Meanwhile, the fact that a Beijing-controlled company is undertaking the repairs is a reminder that China remains active in Venezuela even as the Trump administration has vowed to reduce its influence.
Venezuela’s Information Ministry and China Machinery Engineering didn’t respond to requests for comment.
The Venezuelan power grid has suffered from years of underinvestment and lack of maintenance as US sanctions squeezed the nation’s economy. From factory floors to city streets, blackouts are stoking mounting frustration. The Venezuelan Observatory of Social Conflict documented 531 protests over power failures in September alone, up more than 20-fold from a year earlier.
On paper, the nation has enough generating capacity to produce roughly 37,000 megawatts, with about half coming from hydroelectric dams, according to BloombergNEF. But many plants are in serious disrepair. Parts from some units have been cannibalized to fix others. One of the only places in Venezuela that doesn’t regularly go dark, aside from occasional flickers, is Caracas.
Keeping the lights on is especially vital for the oil sector, the backbone of Venezuela’s economy. Crude operations there rely heavily on the grid, even as new legislation requires companies to install their own generators.
Several oil companies, including Repsol SA, Chevron Corp. and the Pentagon’s partner, North American Blue Energy Partners Inc., are conducting repairs to power infrastructure to ensure they have reliable access to electricity, the people said.
Planta Centro, about 85 miles (135 kilometers) west of Caracas in Carabobo state, was first developed about 50 years ago and once supplied Caracas. It has been largely shut since 2021 because of equipment failures, aging machinery, fuel shortages and other factors. If fully operational, the six-unit complex could crank out more than 2,500 megawatts, which is more than the output of two large nuclear reactors.
China Machinery Engineering, which has had a contract to work at the plant since about 2010, is restarting unit number 6, which will bring about 25% of the complex’s former capacity back online. Once operational, the generator will use fuel oil supplied by state-owned Petroleos de Venezuela SA, the people said.
US President Donald Trump and members of his administration have been making the case for reducing Chinese leverage in Venezuela since shortly after US forces captured former President Nicolás Maduro in January.
“For the first time in 20 years, we are having serious conversations about eroding and eliminating the Iranian presence, the Chinese influence, the Russian presence as well,” US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said during a Jan. 28 Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing.
The work at Planta Centro is part of a broader series of repairs underway on Venezuela’s electricity infrastructure, which is all owned by the national power company, Corporación Eléctrica Nacional SA.
GE Vernova Inc. signed a preliminary agreement with Venezuela in June to help repair the grid. Progress, however, has been slowed by negotiations and equipment delays, the people said. GE Vernova said in a statement that it’s working to finalize contracts to begin work as soon as possible.
Another contractor, Argentina’s Impsa SA, is repairing the Tocoma hydroelectric station, a massive unfinished project on the Caroní River.
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