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SHANGHAI: Large areas of China could face blackouts in the coming months in part due to last month's earthquake, which damaged several hydropower dams and curtailed coal mining, state media reported on Tuesday.
Guangdong province in the south, one of China's manufacturing and export hubs, would face the biggest power shortage, with nearby Guizhou and Yunnan also expected to see demand outstrip supply, Xinhua news agency said.
China has struggled in recent years to keep up with soaring power demand that has accompanied rapid economic growth, with bottlenecks in the industry's over-burdened transport networks leading to power plants running low on coal.
China first reported failures to meet demand in 2000 and suffered its worst shortages in 2004, with more than two thirds of all provinces and regions affected.
In the following two years, the eastern Yangtze River delta and the Pearl River delta, the nation's two economic powerhouses, grappled with shortages.
To address the shortage, Guangdong power officials sought to import electricity from hydropower stations in southwestern China.
But the 8.0 magnitude earthquake on May 12 damaged an area of Sichuan province in southwestern China the size of South Korea, damaging dozens of dams and cutting coal production, Chinese officials said previously.
Xinhua cited electricity officials on Tuesday as saying power generation had been impacted by the damage to the hydropower stations.
Coal reserves at big power plants in Sichuan had been restored following the disaster, but there was still a major shortage elsewhere, Yu Yanshan, deputy head of the State Electricity Regulatory Commission, was quoted as saying.
Meanwhile, PetroChina, the country's largest oil producer, said it would increase diesel production by seven percent in June to address fuel shortages caused partly by the ongoing relief efforts in areas affected by quake.
Xinhua also quoted PetroChina's refining and marketing vice-president Tian Jinghui as saying the company would continue suspending diesel exports in an effort to ease the supply crunch.
- AFP/so
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