Venezuelan refinery hit by explosion restarts
Published:
Sunday, September 2, 2012
Firefighters
and rescue teams work at the Amuay oil refinery after an explosion in
Punto Fijo, Venezuela, on August 25. A huge explosion rocked Venezuela’s
biggest oil refinery and unleashed a ferocious fire, killing over 20
people and injuring dozens in the deadliest disaster in memory for the
country’s key oil industry.
CARACAS— Operations resumed Friday at the Amuay
refinery where an explosion set off a raging fire and killed 42 people
and injured more than 150 others, Venezuela’s state oil company
announced. The accident had nearly paralysed work at the oil
installation in western Venezuela since the huge explosion last week
Saturday, which authorities blamed on a gas leak. Amuay is one of the
largest refineries in the world and is part of the PDVSA oil monopoly’s
Paraguana Refining Complex, which includes the adjacent Cardon refinery.
“Operational activities have resumed safely and gradually” at Amuay,
said Paraguana CEO Jesus Luongo, who is also director of PDVSA Refining.
Venezuelan officials had initially said the refinery would be back in
operation within two days, but later said it would be two days after
fires were put out. In the end, the last fire was extinguished Tuesday
and it took about three days for production to resume. The disaster has
prompted questions about whether Petroleos de Venezuela SA has neglected
maintenance while funneling its revenues into social programmes run by
President Hugo Chávez’s socialist government.
A document released Thursday by two national Venezuelan newspapers said
that months before the explosion, a study by engineers had found
failures in the complex’s maintenance and listed dozens of accidents.
The report, which was also obtained by The Associated Press, was
prepared in March by RJG Risk Engineering for the international
insurance company QBE. The study said there had been 222 accidents at
the Paraguana Refining Complex last year. It said 100 of those involved
fires, and 60 were breaks and leaks in pipes that carry combustible
liquids. Critics have said that in addition to refinery failures from
delayed maintenance, PDVSA’s operations have also suffered from the
firing of 45 per cent of the company’s 18,000 oil workers in 2003 for
joining a strike called by Chávez’s political opponents to pr ess
demands that the president resign. It was not until last March that the
company was able to match pre-layoff levels and begin to increase
production. In recent years, Chávez’s government has increasingly used a
share of earnings from PDVSA to bankroll social programmes known as
“missions.” Its contributions to such programmes rose from less than
US$1.6 billion in 2004 to US$10.4 billion last year.
Pressure on PDVSA to generate funds for programmes that shore up
Chávez’s political support has led to a “deterioration that PDVSA has
had in its refining activities,” Asdrubal Oliveros, an economist and
director of the consulting firm Ecoanalitica, said this week. He said
PDVSA has concentrated bigger investments in oil production to prevent
output from slumping “but has neglected other activities, among them
refining.” Government officials counter that PDVSA has invested US$6
billion in maintaining refineries over the past five years. In other
countries, such a refinery disaster would likely bring higher costs at
the pump for customers. But Venezuela has for decades offered its
citizens highly subsidised gasoline at the cheapest prices in the world:
about 9 US cents per gallon (2 US cents per litre). Oil Minister Rafael
Ramirez has said Venezuela has plenty of fuel on hand to meet domestic
demand in the aftermath of the disaster and won’t have to increase
imports, but he has not discussed the possible financial impacts for the
state oil company. (AP)
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