Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA has restarted operations at a crude oil distillation unit at its El Palito refinery after a stoppage due to an electrical failure last week, five sources familiar with the incident said on Tuesday.
By Reuters
May 16, 2023
The crude unit, which processes some 80,000 barrels per day (bpd) at the country’s smallest refinery, El Palito, had stopped running last Tuesday while repairs were carried out.
Shaky operations and frequent stoppages in Venezuela’s 1.3 million-bpd oil refining system have led to intermittent fuel shortages over recent years, forcing drivers to queue for hours to fill up their tanks.
“We managed to start up the crude plant,” said a worker at El Palito, located on Venezuela’s northern coast. “We brought it up to 80,000 barrels. That’s not a huge relief for demand but something is being produced.”
Another worker at the refinery said they have not yet managed to reactivate the catalytic cracking unit (FCC), which is key to processing gasoline.
“What would help a lot more is if the FCC could be started up, but for now I don’t think it’s feasible because there is work that was not done on time and now we are seeing the consequences of maintenance failures,” the worker said.
PDVSA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
El Palito, which has a capacity of some 146,000 bpd, has been undergoing major repair works since last year, when an Iranian conglomerate brought the key crude unit back online to avert acute fuel shortages. (Reporting by Tibisay Romero in Valencia, Mircely Guanipa in Maracay and Deisy Buitrago in Caracas; Writing by Sarah Morland; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)
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