Venezuela’s 310,000-b/d Cardon refinery in Falcon state is in the process of resuming normal operations after a power outage over the weekend halted activities at the plant, state-owned Petroleos de Venezuela SA (PDVSA) said.
A storm that hit the Paraguana peninsula on Nov. 8 caused an electrical outage that led to a shutdown of unidentified units at the refinery, which is part of Venezuela’s Paraguana Refining Center (CRP), PDVSA reported.
Using the refinery’s emergency safety protocol, CRP staff immediately were able to bring the situation under control and begin the process of safely restarting the impacted units, PDVSA said.
The power failure and subsequent shuttering of units at the Cardon refinery comes only days after a separate electrical outage forced the shutdown of processing units at PDVSA’s 645,000-b/d Amuay refinery, which comprises the other half of CRP (OGJ Online, Nov. 5, 2014).
On Nov. 6, PDVSA said it was continuing to safely reboot units and associated service installations at Amuay impacted by the power failure, but it would be 6 days before all units interrupted by the outage achieved normal operating rates (OGJ Online, Nov. 6, 2014).
No details were disclosed regarding either a timeframe for the full restart of Cardon’s affected units or the outage’s impact to production levels at the refinery, but PDVSA said that the outage did not upset core processing units at the Cardon plant.
The company reiterated that it maintains ample fuel inventories to meet domestic demand as well as supply commitments abroad despite the CRP outages.
