Blackout shuts PdV’s main refining complex

Venezuelan state-owned PdV's 940,000 b/d CRP refining complex remains shut down because of a blackout on the Paraguana Peninsula that started at 11:30pm ET yesterday.

The ongoing outage also paralyzed terminal operations at the CRP, which is comprised of the 635,000 b/d Amuay refinery and 305,000 b/d Cardon refinery.

The incident is likely to exacerbate an already severe shortage of motor fuel and further curb import and export operations that have been pummeled by US sanctions in recent months.

PdV and the oil ministry did not respond to requests for comment on the incident.

The downstream complex, which relies on the weak national power grid for energy supply, had already been operating at only around 15pc of nameplate capacity from the blackout struck late last night.

Venezuela's power crisis peaked on 7 March with a string of nationwide blackouts that extended through early April.

Two oil union officials at the CRP complex attributed the current blackout to "a catastrophic failure" of a turbine at state-owned utility Corpoelec's 315MW Genevapca oil-fired thermal generation complex that supplies Amuay and Cardon and their associated terminals.

The union officials said the blackout knocked out the few oil-processing units that were still operational at the CRP complex before emergency shutdown protocols could be implemented, likely causing structural damage as a result.

Crude that was being processed when the blackout hit is already cooling inside the processing units and will delay restarting units until they are cleaned out and undergo structural safety tests, the officials said.

Corpoelec and oil union officials said last month that some components of the Genevapca power plant had been transferred to Zulia state where Corpoelec is trying to repair the 1.38GW Termozulia thermal generation complex near Maracaibo.

The CRP refining complex accounts for over 72pc of PdV's 1.3mn b/d domestic nameplate refining capacity that also includes the 140,000 El Palito refinery and 190,000 b/d Puerto La Cruz refinery.

El Palito has been shut down since early 2018 and Puerto La Cruz is processing less 20pc of its capacity, oil union officials said.

The government of President Nicolas Maduro blamed the Paraguana blackout on saboteurs and ordered security forces to occupy the CRP and block access to the peninsula, a presidential palace official told Argus .

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