Published: · Region: Latin America · Category: markets

Explosion and Fire Halt Operations at Venezuela’s Cardón Oil Refinery

An explosion at Venezuela’s Cardón refinery on the Paraguaná peninsula triggered a fire and forced a shutdown of operations. Authorities say the blaze started in a gas line connected to a diesel hydrotreater at the country’s second-largest refinery complex.

An explosion at Venezuela’s Cardón refinery has forced operations to stop after a fire broke out in part of the facility, interrupting output at one of the country’s key fuel plants.

The incident took place at the Cardón refinery in the Paraguaná peninsula, Falcón state. The plant is part of the Paraguaná Refining Center, long a central element of Venezuela’s oil-processing system.

According to initial local reporting, the fire began in a gas line connected to the refinery’s diesel hydrotreater unit. That unit is used to treat diesel streams, removing impurities to meet product specifications. Flames were seen rising from the affected area as emergency crews responded.

The explosion and resulting fire prompted operators to halt refinery activities as a safety measure. Officials didn’t immediately specify which units besides the diesel hydrotreater were shut down, but any significant disruption inside a complex facility like Cardón can affect wider operations because processing units are interlinked.

For Venezuela, where the refining network has struggled for years with outages and maintenance problems, taking Cardón offline is a serious blow. The refinery is the second-largest in the country, and its difficulties add to the strain on a fuel supply system that already faces chronic problems.

The fire also highlights the condition of aging equipment across the Venezuelan downstream sector. Gas lines and hydroprocessing units operate under demanding conditions, and failures in such components can quickly escalate into incidents like the one reported at Cardón.

Officials have not yet laid out a clear timeline for extinguishing the fire completely or restarting affected units. How quickly they can safely resume operations, and whether residents and local authorities report fresh fuel shortages in Falcón and beyond, will be the key signals of how deep this outage cuts into Venezuela’s already fragile fuel availability.

Sources

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