Pequiven races to avert ethylene blast

State-owned petrochemicals producer Pequiven evacuated all workers at the Ana Maria Campos complex in Zulia as emergency crews race to depressurize and empty an ethylene storage tank deemed at high risk of imminent explosion.

The tank's vertical walls are "ballooning outward at several points and numerous cracks have been detected," a Pequiven industrial security official at the facility, commonly known as El Tablazo, told Argus. He declined to give more details including the capacity of the failing storage tank, but said it was overfilled due to operator error.

Emergency worker evacuation orders were issued as a preventive measure in case the structurally damaged ethylene tank collapses, potentially sparking an explosion that could spread to adjacent tanks and units that produce low and high-density polyethylene and polyvinyl chloride, the official added.

"El Tablazo's workers were evacuated as a precaution. We can't risk another Amuay-scale tragedy at El Tablazo," the Pequiven official said, referencing a lethal olefins explosion that killed dozens in August 2012 at state-owned PdV's 635,000 b/d Amuay refinery.

Emergency crews at El Tablazo are working as quickly and safely as possible to vent the pressure and transfer the ethylene to other tanks, the Pequiven official said.

El Tablazo's petrochemicals production and storage assets are in "sub-optimal condition due to poor maintenance and the resignation since last year of hundreds of skilled workers," the official said.

Pequiven says El Tablazo has a design output capacity of 3mn t/yr of petrochemical products including ammonia (300,000 t/yr), urea (400,000 t/yr), ethylene (635,000 t/yr), polypropylene (144,000 t/yr), caustic soda (130,000 t/yr), MVC (130,000 t/yr), PVC (120,000 t/yr), high-density polyethylene (160,000 t/yr), low-density polyethylene (80,000 t/yr), linear low-density polyethylene (180,000 t/yr) and ethylene glycol (86,000 t/yr).

Insufficient maintenance of the over 40-year-old petrochemicals production units at El Tablazo has been a problem for over a decade, reflecting Pequiven's chronic cash flow deficit caused by the combined impact of strict government exchange controls and heavily regulated local petrochemicals prices.

El Tablazo's biggest operational challenge is a lack of reliable natural gas supplies, Pequiven officials say. Frequent plant equipment breakdowns, regional power outages and a critical shortage of hard currency to finance equipment and feedstock imports are also major factors in El Tablazo's operational paralysis.