?CARA­CAS–Venezue­lan steel­mak­er Sidor's Jan­u­ary out­put fell 61 per cent year-on-year due to en­er­gy ra­tioning, a lo­cal news­pa­per re­port­ed on Thurs­day, fol­low­ing last year's clo­sure of some its fa­cil­i­ties to save pow­er.

A pro­longed drought has crip­pled the Or­gan­i­sa­tion of Pe­tro­le­um Ex­port­ing Coun­tries (OPEC) na­tion's hy­dro­elec­tric dams, cre­at­ing a po­lit­i­cal headache for left­ist Pres­i­dent Hugo Chavez and open­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty Venezuela may have to close its alu­minum, steel and baux­ite op­er­a­tions. "Sidor re­port­ed a de­cline of 61.3 per cent in its vol­umes of liq­uid steel pro­duc­tion, com­par­ing to the months of Jan­u­ary 2009 and Jan­u­ary 2010," said Pe­dro Acu­na, who rep­re­sents Sidor's work­ers, in com­ments pub­lished in news­pa­per El Uni­ver­sal.

Chavez, who na­tion­alised Sidor in 2008 by buy­ing the ma­jor­i­ty stake held by Terni­um, last year shut­tered sev­er­al Sidor fur­naces to save some 300 megawatt hours, or around 60 per cent of the com­pa­ny's con­sump­tion. Caribbean­Net­News