News Post
Broken refining system in Venezuela
With all but one of its refineries out of opreration, and hampered by US financial and oil sanctions, Venezuela is experiencing significant and widespread shortage of fuel.
The only refinery currently in operation, the Amuay refinery, is processing jjust 120,000 bpd, not its nameplate capacity of 500,000 bpd, since four of its five crude distallation units are down. Other units are also idled and FCC operating at only 40% capacity. PdVSA is having to rely on less skilled emergency crews to jury-rig repairs.
The 305,000 bpd Cardon refinery, the 140,000 bpd fire-damaged El Palito refinery and 190,000 bpd Puerto La Cruz refinery are currently offline. The net result is that Venezuela only has 9% of its total nameplate capacity in operation.
Operationally, all the refineries suffer from a decifit in feedstock, the flight of skilled labor, and inconsistent availabilty of industrial services. Much refinery equipment is beyond repair, made worse by chronic parts shortage and pillage of copper and steel parts for the black market.
On the project front, Russia's Rosneft and China's CNPC - partners on the Orinoc joint venture - have declined to take minority shares in refineries. These stakes would have been in exchange for technical and financial support to salvage the refineries.
The long-planned Puerto La Cruz deep-conversion project has seen its cost estimate balloon from $4 billion in 2008 to $9 billion. This project is now stalled since PdVSA has not paid JV contractor Hyundai-Wison.
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