CORPOVEN PLANS BIG REFINERY IN E. VENEZUELA

Corpoven SA plans to build a 230,000 b/d refinery to process heavy Venezuelan crudes in eastern Venezuela at a projected cost of more than $3 billion. The unit of Venezuela's state oil company Petroleos de Venezuela SA is proceeding with plans to build the refinery without outside equity participation. Although parent Pdvsa is eager to find international partners in a variety of industry projects, the two companies flashed the project a green light to ensure Venezuela has the capability to

Dec. 16, 1991

2 min read

Corpoven SA plans to build a 230,000 b/d refinery to process heavy Venezuelan crudes in eastern Venezuela at a projected cost of more than $3 billion.

The unit of Venezuela's state oil company Petroleos de Venezuela SA is proceeding with plans to build the refinery without outside equity participation.

Although parent Pdvsa is eager to find international partners in a variety of industry projects, the two companies flashed the project a green light to ensure Venezuela has the capability to process growing volumes of heavy crudes the country will be producing in the future.

Yielding to the process of Ministry of Energy and congressional approvals would have slowed down the project considerably.

However, Corpoven has not ruled out a partnership with a foreign company later on.

REFINERY DETAILS

The new refinery will include two 56,000 Flexicoker units in addition to distillation and vacuum units and desulfurization facilities.

With assistance from Fluor Corp., Corpoven is completing conceptual engineering for the project and soon will put out a tender for bids on the basic engineering contract.

Plans call for the refinery to start up in first half 1997.

A second phase, hiking capacity to 400,000 b/d, would be complete at yearend 2000.

Feedstock for the refinery will be 10' gravity Hamaca crude diluted with kerosine to make it more readily transportable.

In addition, the refinery will process 47,000 b/d of resid from Corpoven's Puerto La Cruz refinery.

Its yield will be a mix of 85% white products and 15% bottoms.

Corpoven plans to construct two 170 km pipelines-a 36 in. line for crude and a 20 in. line for kerosine-to link the refinery with crude production centers.