José Bodas, General Secretary of the Unitary Federation of Oil Workers of Venezuela (FUTPV), assured that at this moment there is “low production at the Puerto La Cruz Refinery, despite the fact that PDVSA has tried to increase production.”
Correspondent lapatilla.com
It was unofficially known that, although the “José Antonio Anzoátegui” Cryogenic Plant in Barcelona is undergoing a recovery process, the optimal refining levels that the country needs have not been achieved yet.
The daily demand for fuel in Venezuela is about 240,000 barrels of gasoline. The catalysis of gasoline in the “Centro de Refinación Oriente” oscillates between 25,000 and 30,000 barrels per day if at all, which is obviously not enough to supply even the Anzoátegui State automotive fleet, much less that of neighboring states, as originally stipulated.
The Puerto La Cruz refining center has a processing capacity of 181,000 barrels per day of petroleum derivatives. Currently, only between 110,000 and 120,000 barrels per day are produced. In one of the distillation units of the refinery, where the previous process for the refining of unleaded fuel is carried out, works at only 40% of its capacity.
They take away the gasoline
Although the oil workers do not offer statements in this regard, there is a situation that is an open secret. When failures occur in the refineries in western Venezuela, the demand for fuel in Caracas is covered by Puerto La Cruz, sacrificing the supply in the eastern region.
This situation is evident in the subsidized service stations of Anzoátegui, where the kilometric queues are gaining strength, since the waiting time to fill up ranges from 3 to 12 hours.
Although there have been announcements about solutions to the production, distribution and supply problems, experts say that these could last until December, since the reconstruction of the refineries, which depended on North American technology, will be slow due to the complexity of the work that must be executed and completed in the refining infrastructure.