Paraguaná Oil Refinery

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The Amuay Refinery, part of the Paraguaná Oil Refinery

The Paraguaná petroleum refinery ( Spanish Centro de Refinación de Paraguaná ) is a crude oil refinery complex in Venezuela. It is considered to be the world's second largest refinery complex after the Jamnagar refinery in India. It was created in 1997 from a merger of the Amuay, Bajo Grande and Cardón refineries. In 2012, 955,000 barrels were produced per day. The complex is located in Punto Fijo on the Paraguaná peninsula in Falcón state (the Amuay and Cardón refineries) and on the west coast of Lake Maracaibo in Zulia state (the Bajo Grande refinery). The complex comprises 71% of Venezuela's refining capacity. It is owned by the state company PDVSA .

history

The Cardón refinery started operations in 1949. The owner was the Royal Dutch Shell company . The Amuay refinery was founded in 1950 by the Creole Petrolium Corporation . The Bajo Grande refinery was established in 1965 by Richmond (now Chevron Corporation ).

Accidents

Oil container on fire after the 2012 fire.

After then-Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez laid off around 18,000 PDVSA employees and replaced them with politically acceptable people, a number of security and productivity problems arose. Six accidents occurred in 2005, including an explosion in November that resulted in five deaths and 20 injuries. In 2006 there were five accidents that resulted in three deaths and five injuries. In the following years there were several malfunctions due to fires or technical problems.

A serious accident occurred on August 25, 2012. An explosion at the Amuay refinery killed 48 people and injured 151 others. PDVSA President Eulogio Del Pino made the statement that a gas leak had been discovered an hour earlier, but the contingency plan had not been carried out. The guilt for the explosion subsequently became controversial.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Geoff Hiscock: Earth Wars: The Battle for Global Resources ( English ). John Wiley & Sons , 2012, ISBN 978-1-118-15291-1 , p. 88.
  2. ↑ Venezuela struggles with refinery blaze after deadly blast (English) . August 26, 2012. Retrieved August 27, 2012. 
  3. ↑ Deadly explosion rocks Venezuelan refinery (English) . In: Oil & Gas Journal , PennWell Corporation , August 27, 2012. Retrieved August 28, 2012. 
  4. ↑ Centro de Refinación de Paraguaná ( Spanish ) PDVSA . Retrieved August 25, 2012.
  5. ↑ Venezuela's oil industry: Spilling over (English) . In: The Economist . Retrieved August 29, 2012. 
  6. ↑ Venezuela's economy: Oil leak (English) . In: The Economist . Retrieved August 29, 2012. 
  7. ^ Incidents and accidents involving Venezuela's PDVSA (English) . August 25, 2012. Retrieved August 26, 2012. 
  8. ↑ Pdvsa reports normal operation in Paraguaná refining complex (English) . In: El Universal , March 15, 2011. Retrieved August 25, 2012. 
  9. ↑ Sailu Urribarri: Two Venezuelan refineries temporarily shut after system faults (English) . March 10, 2012. Accessed August 26, 2012. 
  10. ↑ Lissy De Abreu: A devastating fire at Venezuela's main oil refinery, spread Monday (English) . In: Petroleumworld , August 28, 2012. 
  11. ^ Roberto Deniz: Emergency plan in the refinery presumably failed (English) . In: El Universal , August 28, 2012. 
  12. ↑ Sindicato acusó al gobierno (Spanish) , Infobae. August 25, 2012. Archived from the original on August 29, 2012 Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . Retrieved August 26, 2012. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / america.infobae.com 
  13. ^ William Neuman: Venezuelan Government Criticized in Deadly Refinery Blast (English) . In: The New York Times , August 27, 2012.