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He continued: “Patriotic, cognisant of what the His remarks drew criticism from the United
key outstanding issues are, made a final proposal National Congress (UNC), the country’s main
ahead of the deadline on the 29th of October. opposition party. Senator Anita Haynes, a mem-
Today, I regret to say that [this] final proposal ber of the UNC, urged the government to act
does not address the outstanding issues that quickly and to disclose more information. “The
could lead to a signed contractual agreement. government needs to tell us what their plan is
And that is the state of play as we speak.” going forward,” she said during an online press
Khan did not say whether Port of Spain was briefing on October 31. “We cannot be told
open to further negotiations with Patriotic. He this is not happening and we don’t know what
stressed, though, that the government remained happens next. This is a time-sensitive issue. We
committed to bringing an outside investor on are talking about the bread and butter of our
board so that the refinery could be restarted and country.”
hoped to move forward soon. Petrotrin, located in Pointe-a-Pierre, has a
“At this point in time, the government will throughput capacity of 160,000 barrels per day
now be in a position to consider its options. And (bpd). The state-owned plant was taken offline
we’ll have some discussions among the govern- several years ago and has remained idle. The
ment and the Cabinet as to what these options government decided to privatise it in 2018 and
are and the population will be informed as soon had received 77 expressions of interest (EoIs)
as possible when we have greater clarity on this by July 2019. One of these came from Patriotic,
matter,” he was quoted as saying by local press which was eventually authorised to submit a
agencies. binding offer. ™

VENEZUEL A
Explosion reported at Amuay refinery

VENEZUELA’S largest oil refinery has sus-
tained significant damage, following an explo-
sion at a 100,000 barrel per day (bpd) crude
distillation unit (CDU) last week.
According to press reports, the Amuay refin-
ery’s CD-4 facility was hit by the blast in the
early morning hours of October 27. A union
official told Argus Media later that the explosion
appears to have been the result of a vapour blast
triggered by a water leak. He also indicated that
the damaged equipment and facilities might be
difficult to clean up.
The consequences of the explosion “appear
initially to be so severe that the unit could be
irrecoverable and may have to be rebuilt com-
pletely,” said the union official, who was not
named. “But we have to wait until accident
investigators complete their technical reports,”
he added.
He also attributed the blast to efforts by the
national oil company (NOC) PdVSA to resume
production at the 645,000 bpd Amuay refinery. The explosion at the refinery may have resulted from a vapour blast (Photo: EFE)
PdVSA is in such a rush to start turning out gas-
oline in response to Venezuela’s widespread fuel A manager at the refinery confirmed to
shortages that it did not devote adequate atten- Argus Media that both CD-1 and CD-4 had
tion to safety, he charged. remained in recirculation mode after losing util-
One example of this failure, he said, was the ity services. As of last week, the manager said,
decision by the refinery’s management team to CD-1 was still operating in that mode.
keep two CDUs – namely, CD-4 and CD-11 – Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro
operating despite knowledge of a stoppage in appears not to share the opinion of Argus
water and electricity supplies. Both of these Media’s sources. He said during a speech in
units “should have been shut down completely Caracas on October 31 that the explosion at the
when the refinery’s industrial services failed on Amuay refinery had been a “terrorist attack.”
October 23, but PdVSA ordered that both units He also attributed a separate incident that had
be placed into recirculation mode avoid lengthy caused damage to a petrochemical plant in El
safe restart protocols,” he said. Tablazo to US-sponsored terrorism. ™

Week 44 05•November•2020 www. NEWSBASE .com P15