PDVSA having continued trouble at Paraguana refinery

Posted: Tuesday, March 04, 2003 By: Robert Rudnicki

Petroleos de Venezuela's (PDVSA) efforts to recover production of gasoline have been hampered by the company's inability to restart a catalytic cracking unit at the Paraguana refinery. An attempt to restart the unit was made over the weekend, but this failed as problems persisted in being able to establish a stable gas supply and to overcome the effects of sabotage.

However, the unit is expected to be up and running by the end of next week, and once this happens production should stand at 140,000 barrels of gasoline per day, in addition to the 60,000 being produced at the Cardon plant this would lift levels to 200,000 barrels per day, almost enough to cope with domestic demand.

The Venezuelan government has been forced to import significant quantities of gasoline from overseas to meet domestic demand, and although long queues were evident across the country, it now seems that supplies have stabilized and shortages have all but disappeared.