23-06-2025
Venezuela's second-largest refinery halted due to power blackout, sources say
June 23 (Reuters) - Venezuela's second-largest refinery, the 310,000-barrel-per-day Cardon plant operated by state company PDVSA, has been halted due to a power blackout, two sources with knowledge of operations said on Monday.
Venezuela's aging refining network has frequent outages after years on insufficient investment, mismanagement and U.S. sanctions preventing the import of spare parts. In recent months, Cardon has been key to processing feedstock from some of the Orinoco Belt's heavy crude projects.
The blackout began early in the morning and did not affect Cardon's neighboring refinery, the 645,000-bpd Amuay plant, one of the sources said.
PDVSA was moving equipment between the two facilities to reestablish power as soon as possible, the second source said.
