A huge explosion rocked Venezuela's biggest oil refinery and
unleashed a ferocious fire on Saturday, killing at least 39 people and injuring
more than 80 others in one of the deadliest disasters ever to hit the country's
key oil industry. Balls of fire rose over the Amuay refinery, among the largest
in the world, in video posted on the Internet by people who were nearby at the
time. Government officials pledged to restart the refinery within two days and
said the country has plenty of fuel supplies on hand to meet domestic needs as
well as its export commitments.
The explosion shattered walls
of nearby shops, ripped out windows from homes and left the surrounding streets
covered with rubble and twisted scraps of metal.
President Hugo Chavez declared three days of mourning and
ordered an investigation to determine the cause of the explosion. "This
affects all of us," Chavez said by phone on state television. "It's
very sad, very painful."
Vice-President Elias Jaua, who travelled to the area in western
Venezuela, said on state television late Saturday that at least 39 people were
killed by the explosion, up from the earlier death toll of 26. He said that the
dead included 18 National Guard troops and that six of the bodies had not yet
been identified. Other officials said earlier that the dead included a 10-year-old
boy. In a neighborhood next to the refinery, shopkeeper Yolimar Romero said she
was at her computer when a shock wave swept over the area shortly after 1 a.m.
"At that instant, the whole house shook as if it were an earthquake,"
she said. "The windows went flying off with their frames and
everything." Electricity was knocked out, leaving Romero in the dark and
her house filled with smoke. She found a flashlight and started looking for her
husband and three children. Outside on the street, the family saw scattered
hunks of brick walls and ruins of a National Guard post and about 20 other
homes. Bodies were being pulled from buildings down the street.
At least 86 people were injured, nine of them seriously, Health
Minister Eugenia Sader said at a hospital where the wounded were taken. She
said 77 people suffered light injuries and were released. Flames reaching
nearly 100 feet into the night air still crackled almost 20 hours after the
explosion occurred, giving off searing heat felt by the residents of the
neighbourhood located approximately 1,000 feet from the refinery. "This
does not seem to be getting any better, I see and feel more and more
flames," said Francisco Rojas, a 29-year-old taxi driver from the
neighbourhood as he loaded some of his belongings into a truck. "I have a
young daughter and my wife, and we don't want to take the risk of dying
here," Rojas added.
Officials said firefighters had largely controlled the fire at
the refinery on the Paraguana Peninsula, where flames were still visible on
Saturday night after billowing dark smoke all day.
The blast occurred about 1:15 a.m. when a natural gas leak
created a cloud that ignited, Oil Minister Rafael Ramirez said. "That gas
generated a cloud that later exploded and has caused fires in at least two
tanks of the refinery and surrounding areas," Ramirez said. Images shortly
after the explosion showed the flames casting an orange glow against the night
sky, and injured survivors on a stretcher and in a wheelchair. The bloodied
bodies of victims were loaded onto pickup trucks. Ramirez said a panel of
investigators was being formed to determine the cause of the gas leak. A
prosecutor was appointed to lead the investigation and troops were deployed to
the area.
While the cause of the disaster remains unclear, some oil
workers and critics of Chavez's government have recently pointed to increasing
numbers of smaller accidents and spills as an indication of problems within the
state-run company. "We warned that something was going to happen, a catastrophic
event," said Ivan Freites, secretary general of a 1,200-member union of
oil and natural gas industry workers in Falcon state where the
refinery is located. He spoke in a telephone interview from an area near the
refinery, where he could see the flames raging in the distance. The refinery
complex's general manager, Jesus Luongo, denied that a lack of maintenance was
to blame, saying in the past three years more than $6 billion has been invested
in maintaining the country's refineries. Ramirez said the explosion hit an area
of storage tanks, damaging nine tanks. "All of the events happened very
quickly," Ramirez said. "When we got here in the middle of the night,
at 3 or 3:30 in the morning, the fire was at its peak." The oil minister
said that supplies of fuel had been cut off to part of the refinery and that
fire fighters were using foam to extinguish the flames in one of the remaining
tanks. "This regrettable and sad event is controlled, is under
control," Ramirez said on television, while plumes of smoke continued to
billow.
Amuay is part of the Paraguana Refinery Complex, which also
includes the adjacent Cardon refinery. Together, the two refineries process
about 900,000 barrels of crude per day and 200,000 barrels of gasoline.
Venezuela is a major supplier of oil to the U.S. and a member of the Organization of
Petroleum Exporting Countries. Ramirez said the state oil company Petroleos de
Venezuela SA should be able to "restart operations in a maximum of two
days." "We want to tell the country that we have sufficient
inventories of fuel. We have 10 days of inventory of fuel," Ramirez said.
He said the country's other refineries were operating at full capacity and
would be able to "deal with any situation in our domestic market." An
official of the state oil company, known as PDVSA, said the country also has
enough supplies on hand to guarantee its international supply commitments. The
official spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to speak
publicly about the matter.
In terms of international oil markets, the disaster is not
likely to cause much of a ripple, said Jason Schenker, an energy analyst and
president of Austin, Texas-based Prestige Economics LLC. Noting that
other refinery accidents and shutdowns regularly occur around the world, he
said: "There's likely to be relatively limited impact on global crude or
product pricing." "The real tragedy," he said, "is that
these events continue to happen, not just in Venezuela but everywhere. It is a
dangerous business." Gustavo Coronel, an energy consultant and former
PDVSA executive, called the tragedy "probably the worst one the oil
industry has had in many years. Accidents happen, of course, although the
problem with PDVSA is the inordinate amount of accidents that have taken place
during the last years," he said. Considering the overall record, "we
are not talking about bad luck but about lack of maintenance and inept
management," he said.
The labor leader Freites, who has worked at the refinery for 29
years, said workers had repeatedly alerted state oil company officials to
problems that they feared could lead to an accident. "We've been
complaining about problems and risks, including fires, broken pipes and a lack
of spare parts," Freites said. One opposition group comprised of former
PDVSA employees, Gente del Petroleo, or Oil People, said it could not yet pass
judgment on the cause of the explosion. But it but noted there had been ample
concerns about lack of maintenance and poor management. The group said in a
statement that since 2003, 79 other serious accidents have been reported at the
Paraguana Refinery Complex, collectively killing a total of 19 workers and
injuring 67 others.
Opposition leader
Henrique Capriles, who is challenging Chavez in the country's Oct. 7 presidential
election, expressed condolences to the victims and their families. "We
Venezuelans are one, and we grow in the face of this type of situations,"
Capriles said
