Amuay restarts limited operations, Cardon still shut

Venezuela state-owned PdV's 635,000 b/d Amuay refinery has restarted a faulty crude distillation unit (CDU) using parts stripped from other inoperative CDU's, but workers that repaired the unit say it could fail again at any moment.

Amuay and the nearby 305,000 b/d Cardon refinery comprise the 940,000 b/d CRP complex, which operates as an integrated facility and accounts for about 72pc of PdV's domestic refining capacity of 1.3mn b/d.

Cardon, which also has been out of service since 25 January because of multiple unspecified breakdowns, should be online again before the end of February, a PdV manager at Cardon tells Argus.

PdV has not officially acknowledged CRP's shutdown on 25-27 January and declines to comment on the status of ongoing repairs at the Amuay and Cardon refineries.

CRP was operating at about 10pc of its combined nameplate capacity before PdV operators were forced to shut down Cardon's limited crude processing operations, followed by Amuay's CDU on 27 January, according to several PdV workers and managers at the refineries.

But these PdV officials also say it is increasingly difficult to sustain limited crude processing operations at the CRP, where key processing units have been out of service for up to two years and supplies of crude and electricity are unstable.

Crude processing units currently out of service at the CRP complex include Amuay's 108,000 b/d fluidized catalytic cracker (FCC) and Cardon's 86,000 b/d FCC. Amuay refinery's flexicoker, four of its five CDU's and its hydrodesulphurization (HDS) units also are out of service, senior oil union officials at the CRP said.

Operational conditions are worse at Cardon, where all CDU, HDS, hydrotreater and alkylation units are out of service awaiting repairs, the union officials said.