Venezuela's Cardon Refinery Back Online after Power Outage

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Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--After experiencing an outage on October 19, 2007, production capacity at PDVSA's Cardon refinery reached normal rates on October 22, 2007. Two out of the 30 processing units are under maintenance because of a delay on a planned turnaround.

PDVSA, a state-owned oil company, owns the Paraguana Refining Center (Centro de Refinacion Paraguana - CRP), one of the largest refining centers in the world and Venezuela's main source of gasoline exports that is composed of the Cardon and Amuay refineries. Cardon refinery, in Flacon state (Venezuela), has a 295,000-barrel-per-day production capacity and a total of 30 processing units.

Planned maintenance in Crude 1 and Vacuum 1 at the Cardon refinery began September 15 and is scheduled to last 30 mechanical days. The FCCU and Alkylation 1 expansion, in which PDVSA is planning to expand the FCCU 11,000 t/d processing capacity to 12,800 t/d and the 1,500 t/d Alkylation 1 capacity to 2,400 t/d, is scheduled to be performed during the first quarter of 2008 for 110 days. For details, view related October 1, 2007, article - Two Maintenance Turnarounds Remain for PDVSA Refining Complex This Year.

A maintenance team is still working on Cardon refinery's Crude 1 and Vacuum 1 and expects to hand the units over on October 30. No other turnarounds are planned at Cardon refinery for the rest of the year.

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