"Ugly and rusty," Venezuela's refineries are relics that will be hard to revive

By Mircely Guanipa , Tibisay Romero and Deisy Buitrago

PUNTO FIJO/EL PALITO, Venezuela, July 29 (Reuters) - The Paraguana Refining Center successful Western Venezuela erstwhile symbolized the country's lipid wealthiness and its ambition to crook immense crude reserves into fuels and export revenue.

Today, the 955,000-barrel-per-day analyzable successful Falcon authorities runs astatine a fraction of capacity, a diminution decades successful the making and unrelated to the beardown earthquakes that struck Venezuela past month.

In the months earlier the quakes, Reuters visited the country surrounding the Amuay and Cardon refineries ‌that marque up the Paraguana complex, on with 1 of Venezuela's different 2 progressive refineries, and interviewed 4 twelve workers, contractors, residents and experts.

One idiosyncratic astatine the 645,000-barrel-per-day (bpd) Amuay refinery said everything looks "ugly and rusty." Open-air discarded pits are astir full. Residue seeps crossed ‌pipelines and valve stations. Workers accidental years of underinvestment, instrumentality failures and shortages person near Paraguana struggling to nutrient the substance Venezuelans need.

The reporting revealed festering decay and small ongoing attraction astatine each 3 facilities, underscoring the monumental challenges Venezuela faces successful restoring its lipid infrastructure to the payment of its citizens, adjacent arsenic President Donald Trump promises $100 cardinal successful investments by ​foreign lipid companies.

Venezuela's refineries are astatine erstwhile among its astir dilapidated assets and the astir captious to Venezuelan consumers. Yet these refineries are among the slightest apt to spot overseas concern immoderate clip soon, manufacture executives and analysts told Reuters.

Recovery from the 2 earthquakes, which killed much than 5,000 radical and caused wide destruction, has further analyzable the refineries' outlook, said Oswaldo Felizzola, a Venezuelan vigor analyst.

"Right now, the precedence intelligibly seems to beryllium rebuilding and dealing with each the devastation the earthquakes caused crossed the country," helium said.

He said immoderate large investments successful refining would present apt beryllium pushed into 2027 and beyond arsenic the authorities focuses connected lipid production. Fully restoring refining capableness would necessitate astatine slightest $20 billion, Felizzola said, an estimation echoed by different manufacture experts Reuters interviewed.

NEWFOUND INTEREST IN VENEZUELA

Some U.S. and multinational lipid companies person expressed involvement successful Venezuela this twelvemonth aft the U.S. ousted socialist President Nicolas Maduro successful a January 3 raid. But they ‌have small inducement to rehabilitate section refineries erstwhile the U.S. has its ain refineries capable to process ⁠Venezuela's challenging dense sour crude grades.