Venezuela’s biggest refinery fire and explosion kills 41, hundreds injured
Venezuela's biggest refinery is on track to restart within two days, the Energy minister said on Sunday, a day after an explosion and fire there killed 41people in one of the global oil industry's deadliest accidents.
Energy Minister Rafael Ramirez said the fire was now contained in two storage tanks, reiterating that no production units had been affected by Saturday's pre-dawn disaster at the 645,000-barrel-per-day (bpd) Amuay refinery, which sits on a peninsula in the Caribbean in western Venezuela.
On Sunday, the skeletal remains of a National Guard barracks destroyed in the blast sagged amid broken concrete and rubble, amid flames and huge plumes of smoke coming from the two burning tanks, which contained naphtha and crude oil.
The explosion flattened some homes in the immediate vicinity, in some cases just across the street from the refinery's fence. Nearby roads were covered with petroleum.
The victims included 18 National Guard troops and 17 civilians; six remain unidentified.
According to witnesses said fire-fighters did not appear to be trying to extinguish the blaze just before midday on Sunday, suggesting that the authorities may have decided to let the remaining fuel in the tanks burn itself out.
The accident, which also wounded dozens of people, was the worst to hit Venezuela's oil industry. It follows a decade of repeated outages and accidents at installations run by state oil company PDVSA that have prompted allegations of mismanagement by President Hugo Chavez's government.
But the incident is likely to have little impact on world fuel prices because Venezuela can use its existing fuel stocks to supply the country's domestic market, as well as maintain exports.
It ranks as one of the deadliest refinery accidents in the recent history of the global oil industry, approaching the toll of the 1997 fire at Hindustan Petroleum's Visakhapatnam refinery in India that killed 56, and topping the 2005 BP Texas City refinery blast that killed 15 workers.
Amuay had already partially shut operations at least twice this year due to a small fire and the failure of a cooling unit.
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These are the great hope to help Argentina develop it's energy resources.
However, it's bad that there were casaulties.
All the refinary and operations people he got rid of to stuff his own, inexperienced (to say the least) people into place have probably left the country, never to return while these idiots are running the asylum.
Pity the operations equipment did not get wrecked as well.
Safety last again: the fire is still burning, but operations are to restart in two days. Minister speaks with forked tongue?
This is what happends when governments with little to no experiance “mis” manage industries which they do not understand and are run by accountants rather than experts. Where governments do run these kinds of industrias it is vital that they are run my experinced people not government cronies. These facilities have been built to great aclaim but then are allowed to deteriate due to lack of money in investment. If this was a private compnay the economic fines and compensation to the families of th0ose who have died would of been huge never mind being used as a massive political tool by Chavez. Of course with Venezula being run by a dictorsito this will be swept under the carpet and the people will suffer as usual.
Argentina, take this as a warning of what happends when you let government cronies run indistrias they dont udnerstand.
As he pushs more and more production with poorly maintained equipment, rest assured this is not the last. A sad loss of life indeed.
Can you help your USA Debt Clock...tic tic tic...aka Conqueror?
THIS ARTICLE:
Venezuela’s biggest refinery fire and explosion kills 41, hundreds injured
US AMERICANS HAVE THE LARGET NATIONAL DEBT ....IN THE WORLD................................THE USA IS FLAT BROKE!
AND GETTING WORST STARTING 1/1/2013!
@6 Piper Alpha ring a bell, Troll
@10 try and stay vaguely on topic you stupid drongo....
I am very upset ....why should I check the word....YOU understand what I said....same to you! lol
If removing the professionally trained personnel and replacing them with military placemen, as Dead Man Walking did, is not HIS rsponsibility then whose is it? Cameron, Bush?
Stop letting your leftist dogma cloud your thinking ability.
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