Rafael Ramírez, the People’s Minister of Petroleum and Mining and President of Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), visited the main control room of the Paraguaná Refinery Complex in the northwestern Venezuelan state of Falcón and provided technical details on the works currently carried out in the Amuay Refinery to ensure a safe start-up of all the processing units of the plant.

“We are here in the plants of Amuay oil refinery. We have continued oil shipments, such as the Inciarte vessel, which carries 60,000 barrels of asphalt to Puerto La Cruz; the Nereo tanker, with 300,000 barrels of compounds for gasoline production to El Palito Refinery and the Clarity vessel with 280,000 barrels of gasoline and diesel to Bajo Grande Refinery; our refineries continue receiving inputs, as usual”, Minister Ramírez added.

He highlighted the technical skills and human integrity of PDVSA workers: “We have a group of people with a lot of experience and highly qualified young workers who have been trained for specific tasks, because the Paraguaná Refining Center (CRP) -besides being the largest refining center in the world in terms of volume management, encompasses two refineries: Amuay and Cardón, which were built in 1949 and 1950 - have different operational criteria that we have managed to unify.

Omar Bravo, CRP assistant manager, with 34 years experience in the oil industry, said: “despite the emergency, all services have been kept working and, as a result, we are going to have a safe start-up of the plant.”

Meanwhile, Ramón Uzcátegui, CRP Operating Manager, with 25 years of experience, said: “Ninety five percent of CRP’s facilities are automated. In this main control room, we have the control panel operators of Amuay Flexicoker, the world’s largest, with a processing capacity of 64,000 barrels per day”.

“The panel operators worked first as operators and then as area supervisors. Later, they were trained and certified as control panel operators”, Uzcátegui added.

Minister Ramírez highlighted that the Catalytic Cracking Unit is also monitored at the CRP’s main control room, which he called “the heart of Amuay refinery”. This unit was repaired this year and it started-up safely.

“Plant shutdowns for scheduled major maintenance work have been planned. In the past five years, we have invested only in the CRP over 4.3 billion dollars until July 2012. We have invested 6 billion dollars in maintenance works all over the country”.

In view of the irresponsible statements speculating about the explosion of two gas tanks, Ramírez showed the control panel from which these facilities are run and monitored and he confirmed that they are completely safe and operational: “The olefin, isobutane and propane tanks of the refinery are in a very good condition. Their protection systems worked at the right time during the emergency”.

“With these reports, we want to bring peace and tranquility. These guys were able to rescue the CRP under much more adverse conditions”, the president of PDVSA stated.

William Jordán, CRP’s Industrial Safety manager, said: “More than 200 people worked extremely hard to control the emergency. We used state-of-the-art firefighting technology purchased by PDVSA, which allow for a more effective and efficient response”.

Jordán also thanked “the support provided by fellow team members of Anaco, Occidente, Puerto La Cruz, El Palito and all the PDVSA areas who worked with us to control this emergency”.

Carlos Camero, one of the firemen, highlighted the hard work of these heroes: “We fought the fire with the security that we worked as a team, and we had the situation under control. It shows that the members of the New PDVSA are a united group. Although some people want to divide us, we showed that we can keep any situation under control”. Ramón Cossi, Chief Fire Officer, said: “People can count on us. We are working hard in accident prevention”.

To see the Amuay refinery site