COPAE  2010-02-01 22:50   

aka Union Feroza, Union Tramposa, Union Mañosa or Union Penosa

Por Alejandro Alfaro Santiz

If you belong to the lucky ones with Internet access I challenge you to make an experiment: go to the search page of your preference (mine is blackle) and type “Union Fenosa News” Hit enter and you´ll get an interesting mix of news from the company and news about the company. The first pages (with 10 results per page) talk about its operations worldwide and how good they are doing. The last pages talk about the effect this transnational Spanish company has in the life of hundreds of thousands of human beings. Now type “Union Fenosa Problems”… different isn´t it?

But…Who is Union Fenosa?

Union Fenosa is a large Spanish company dedicated to the production and distribution to end users of gas and electricity. It started on November 23, 1982 with the name Union Electrica Fenosa after the fusion between Union Electrica, created in 1912 as Union Electrica Madrileña and Fuerzas Electricas del Noroeste S.A. (FENOSA) company created in 1943 by Pedro Barrié de la Maza, Fenosa Count. It´s origins therefore are in Madrid as in Galicia.

It ventures in the international market when in 1986 starts to work in Uruguay as a consultant for public companies. In the future it will use the knwoladge acquired to buy public companies. In 1995 starts to work in Argentina and Bolivia. Between 1998 and 2000 in México, Guatemala, Republica Dominicana, Panamá and Colombia.

How could it make it into Latinamerica? Basically because the public companies where sold for a lower price than their real value and because in almost all the countries it works as the only company that sells electricity to the people, almost a monopoly.

Obviously this was made working together with local oligarchies. In Guatemala, as Ferrigno says (2009) “91.4% of the stocks of both DEOCSA and DEORSA belong to Distribuidora Electrica del Caribe S.A., name given to the joint venture of Guatemalan business man and the Spanish Union Fenosa.”

Also,as Cerda (2005) says, it´s expansion strategy is based on the political and economical support given by international organizations that promote development, such as the World Bank or the Inter American Bank that facilitate and finance the establishment of their international plans. Through rural electrification plans partially financed by these institutions, the company assures better conditions to enter on some of the countries where it has invested, usually ones with a poor developed energy market. It´s business project, same as other Spanish transnational companies, has been delivered with several ecological and sociopolitical impacts, both as producer and a distribution company.

In July 2008 Gas Natural SDG S.A., announces its intentions to buy Union Fenosa. On September 4th 2008 it´s completely integrated into Gas Natural. Gas Natural SDG S.A., it’s an energy multinational leader in the gas sector in Spain and Latin America; it´s also the 4th gas transportation largest company worldwide and one of the main operators of combined cycles around the world.

Nowadays, according to its web page, Union Fenosa/Gas natural works on: Electric Business, Gas, Engineering, Mining and Other Business (telecommunications /electrochemical industries / operation and maintenance) in the following countries:

América: México, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Panamá, Nicaragua, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Venezuela, Colombia, Brasil Argentina, Chile y Uruguay.
Europe: Spain, Portugal, France, Italy, Romania, Bulgaria and the Republic of Moldova.
Asia: Oman, Jordan, Saudi Arabia
Africa: Morocco, Algeria, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Kenya, Madagascar and South Africa.
Oceanía: Australia

According to it´s 2008 annual report, of a total of 12,781 proffesionals working for UF 44% are in American continent that is 5,581. Therefore we can assume that Latin America is a very important region for its electric business. But this importance is not reflected in the service they give to users; in the first 5 months of 2009 there were 90,358 complaints against the company only in Guatemala.
Read Prensa Libre July 21st 2009 pdf version page 2 The direct link to the note didn´t work in December 09 nor January 10)

The number of complaints equals 602 per day. According to the 2009 Corporate Social Responsibility Report “In 2008 there were 27 own offices and 29 joint, most of these restructured. In addition there are 163 regional offices that collect payments in different points of the country, where clients can pay their bills” This means that each office received a media of 3 complaints every day (assuming they would work 7 days a week)

It is not my intention to tell all the abuses Union Fenosa has made in Guatemala and Latin America, and anyway there´s not that much room in here. (You can search for them on the Internet). It´s enough to say that all the different names that the company receives (and that are in the subtitle) are based on the perception of it, that the users have. Besides in this Oak there´s an article that is about the Malacatan and Union Fenosa case.

In the new webpage there´s a blinking slogan “Unir gas y electricidad no es un paso, es un salto”, (Join gas and electricity is not a step it´s a jump) after experiencing what the company does in Guatemala and reading about what it does in LatinAmerica and the world, I can´t get the slogan out of my head “Unir gas y electricidad no es un paso, es un asalto” (Join gas and electricity is not a step, it´s a robbery)

Bibliography.

Cerdá Miguel Ortega (c) 2005 La deuda ecología española. Impactos ecológicos y sociales de la economía española en el extranjero. Secretariado de Publicaciones de la Universidad de Sevilla

Ferrigno, Victor 2009 El Negocio Oscuro de la Luz. Flacso Guatemala. http://www.flacso.edu.gt/dialogo/dialogo.pdf

Informe Anual Union Fenosa 2008 http://portal.gasnatural.com/archivos/corp/20090901_1_UF_Informe_Anual.pdf

www.gasnatural.com