PdV refineries short of feedstock, parts, labor

Venezuelan state-owned PdV's long struggle to recover its 940,000 b/d CRP refining complex is hampered by feedstock shortages, a lack of maintenance and replacement parts, and labor flight, company and union officials tell Argus.

CRP, located on the Paraguaná peninsula in western Venezuela, includes the 635,000 b/d Amuay refinery and nearby 305,000 b/d Cardón refinery. The complex has operated at about 30pc of nameplate capacity over the past year because of repeated forced shutdowns of its fluidized catalytic crackers, crude distillation plants and other units.

Amuay´s 104,000 b/d FCC was shut on 1 September on a lack of imported VGO, a PdV executive said.

On 27 August, an unspecified equipment failure forced PdV to halt Amuay's recently restarted 62,000 b/d flexicoker, which has been mostly off line since January. Two distillation units, Nos. 2 and 4, are also out of service at Amuay, the executive added.

Amuay's "most important crude processing units have been mostly down over the past 11 months because PdV has been unable to import parts and no longer has the skilled workers to repair and restart the plants," a union director at the CRP said.

Cardón successfully restarted its FCC over the weekend of 25-26 August after six months of repairs, but local crude and imported feedstock deficits are hampering PdV's efforts to ramp up throughput, the union official added.

PdV is now trying to compensate for the loss of the CRP's gasoline manufacturing units by restarting its 146,000 b/d El Palito refinery, which has been down for nearly a year. But the union director says the effort is unlikely to succeed because of the same problems that have plagued CRP. El Palito is located in Carabobo state, west of Caracas.

PdV's local refining assets totaling a combined 1.3mn b/d of crude have been "destroyed operationally because the company no longer has the money, skilled workers or technical capacity to operate its refineries safely," the union official said.

PdV's 195,000 b/d Puerto La Cruz refinery in Anzoátegui is also "on its knees, currently operating at about one-quarter of its nameplate capacity," a union official in eastern Venezuela said. A $9bn deep conversion project to upgrade the refinery to 210,000 b/d under a 2013 contract with Hyundai-Wison stalled following a series of corruption scandals in 2014-15.