PARAGUANA, Venezuela, (Reuters) – Venezuela’s biggest refinery could restart operations on Friday and fires still burning in three storage tanks will be extinguished within two days, the country’s energy minister told Reuters, following the country’s worst oil industry accident.
An explosion on Saturday at the Amuay refinery killed 48 people and pushed up U.S. fuel prices in markets that were already bullish because of a threat that Tropical Storm Isaac could disrupt refinery operations on the U.S. Gulf Coast.
The fire spread to a third storage tank yesterday, forcing authorities to shelve plans for quick restart of the 645,000 barrel-per-day facility.
“We are going to extinguish the first of the tanks either today or tomorrow; then we’ll continue working on the other two, which should burn themselves out in two days,” Energy Minister Rafael Ramirez told Reuters in an exclusive telephone interview.
“The (production) units at Amuay will restart about two days after that, approximately on Friday.”
He said Venezuela currently had no plans to import fuel, and that today’s rise in U.S. gasoline prices would not last.
State oil company PDVSA was no longer looking to hire floating storage in the area, the minister added, because Amuay still had enough working storage capacity.
The blast has spurred fresh criticism and claims of mismanagement by PDVSA.
Reuters witnesses said fire trucks surrounded the third tank to spray it with foam, and authorities began evacuating nearby homes and escorting journalists away from the searing heat of the scene.
