Reporting by Mircely Guanipa, Tibisay Romero and Deisy Buitrago/Reuters

CARACAS
EnergiesNet.com 01 11 2022

Venezuela has ramped up gasoline output after long-running shortages of motor fuel owing to the bad shape of its refineries, people familiar with the matter said, lifting production to almost 160,000 barrels per day (bpd).

State-run oil company PDVSA has received help from Iran to repair and replace equipment at ageing plants. It has also revamped processing to handle a more diverse slate of crude grades to produce more gasoline and diesel.

PDVSA refineries this week are producing almost 160,000 bpd of gasoline and components includes alkylate. The company also is producing about 38,000 bpd of diesel. In December, PDVSA produced 82,000 bpd of finished gasoline, the sources said.

It is unclear how long the higher output will last because many plants need to be replaced. Not all processing units are operating simultaneously, which could limit the variety and quality of fuels produced, the sources said.

PDVSA did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

Retail gasoline sales, denominated in dollars since 2020, are now a main source of revenue for the company.

The OPEC member has struggled with gasoline and diesel shortages that led to long queues and rationing, though the situation has improved since 2020 thanks to imports of Iranian gasoline. read more

PDVSA’s smallest refinery, the 146,000 bpd El Palito, resumed gasoline production last weekend after 12 months of paralysis. Workers had managed to restore partial service from the facility’s crude distillation unit, an alkylation unit and a fluid catalytic cracker (FCC), which is essential to gasoline production, four people said.

«The FCC is working at 40%. There are some problems there, though. The humid gas compressor has not been able to restart,» one of the workers said.

At PDVSA’s largest refinery, the 645,000 bpd Amuay on the west coast, the FCC has processed 64,000 bpd after restarting in December, adding capacity to two operational crude distillation and several olefin units, two of the workers said.

In neighboring Cardon, workers also brought the FCC back into service but a catalyst must arrive before the unit can be fully operational. One of the facility’s distillation units, a hydrodesulfurization plant and a naphtha reformer are operative, the workers said.

The 187,000 bpd Puerto la Cruz refinery in eastern Venezuela also has stabilized fuel output in recent weeks at about 33,000 bpd, one source said.

Reporting by Mircely Guanipa in Maracay, Tibisay Romero in Valencia and Deisy Buitrago in Caracas. Additional reporting and writing by Marianna Parraga in Houston Editing by David Goodman from Reuters

reuters.com 01 11 2022