# A nationwide blackout hits Venezuela after years of grid underinvestment Date: 2019 ## The fact On 7 March 2019 a nationwide electricity blackout began, lasting days in much of the country, cutting water, hospitals, and communications. [Maduro](/people/nicolas-maduro) blamed a US attack. Independent reporting described a collapsed grid after years of underinvestment and PDVSA-adjacent decay. ## Context 2016–18 collapse sat as parent. Neighbouring Guaidó week is the same season. He did not sit as every Corpoelec technician. 2016 GDP leak is a parent decay year. OFAC January 2019 is a neighbour external shock. The President of Venezuela heads the national executive, commands FANB as commander-in-chief, appoints the cabinet, and can request enabling laws. He does not write an OFAC designation, an ICC Pre-Trial Chamber decision, or a Colombian migration statute. A CNE announcement is not an opposition acta and is not a Carter Center finding. Those three statuses stay on separate rows. An ICC investigation is not a conviction. An IMF figure is labelled as an estimate where BCV stopped publishing. Sanctions after 2017 and 2019 are an external causal factor; they do not erase the pre-2017 PDVSA-and-policy collapse. ## Evidence and sources Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Venezuela carries the official instrument or communique. Reuters records the same dated act independently. ## Significance The path is energy security and [humanitarian access](/drivers/humanitarian-access): a completed national-grid failure week. ## What is established and what is not Established: 7 March 2019 nationwide blackout, independently reported. Not established: that a unique foreign cyber-attack was thereby proven in a Venezuelan court, or a unique later mortality coefficient from that Thursday. What would change the picture: a contradictory original with a different date or name, a later repeal, a court that vacated the instrument, or a measured series that can be argued, with lag and alternatives, as a consequence of this instrument rather than of later institutions. The date is the date of this instrument, not a licence to back-date every later harm or benefit. He owned the executive and PDVSA-adjacent power weather. A later repeal, court stay, or successor order would be a different Fact with a different date. That pair identifies A nationwide blackout hits Venezuela after years of grid underinvestment, not a later speech about A nationwide blackout hits Venezuela after years of grid underinvestment. Co-authors and later implementers named in Context remain on the file. A nationwide blackout hits Venezuela after years of grid underinvestment on 2019-03-07 is not a licence to treat every later Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Venezuela communique as this same act. If a later repeal, stay, or successor instrument exists, it needs its own date and its own row. This dossier refuses to average A nationwide blackout hits Venezuela after years of grid underinvestment into a personality. The contribution described on this Person row is limited to Corpoelec operated the grid. He owned the executive and PDVSA-adjacent power weather. That limit is the alternative to treating office-holding as authorship of every later series. ## People - Nicolás Maduro: https://factrail.ai/people/nicolas-maduro ## Drivers - Energy Security: https://factrail.ai/drivers/energy-security - Humanitarian Access: https://factrail.ai/drivers/humanitarian-access ## Sources - https://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-politics-blackout-idUSKBN1QP0G2 - https://mppre.gob.ve/ ## Methodology https://factrail.ai/methodology Canonical: https://factrail.ai/facts/ve-blackout-2019