PdVSA Paraguana Refinery Can't Restart Cat Cracking Unit

sg.biz.yahoo.com Tuesday March 4, 1:32 AM

CARACAS (Dow Jones)--Venezuela's state-owned oil monopoly Petroleos de Venezuela (E.PVZ), or PdVSA, over the weekend failed to restart one of its catalytic cracking units at the massive Paraguana refinery complex, a PdVSA spokesman said Monday.

Due to acts of sabotage and troubles to establish a stable natural gas feed, one of the catalytic cracking units at the Amuay plant that should help achieve a production of around 140,000 barrels per day of gasoline couldn't be started up, the PdVSA spokesman said.

He added that by the end of next week all units should produce 140,000 b/d of gasoline. A total of around 200,000 b/d, including the Cardon plant that together with Amuay makes up the Paraguana refinery complex, is produced at the Paraguana complex.

At Cardon, some 60,000 b/d of gasoline is produced. If the Paraguana refinery complex were to fully produce gasoline, domestic supply would be almost fully restored.

PdVSA is slowly recovering from a two-month strike aimed at the ouster of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. While oil production and exports are gradually recovering, refineries haven't been able to ramp up their processing capacity. The problems have caused a serious domestic gasoline shortage which only could be overcome with gasoline imports.

Separately, the PdVSA spokesman further said he expects the company to have 500,000 barrels per day of crude production that was shut in Friday back online later this week. The production was shut in as storage tanks have filled and exports from the Jose port in eastern Venezuela had to be slowed down.

By Fred Pals, Dow Jones Newswires;58414-2887461; fred.pals@dowjones.com;