PARAGUANA, Venezuela, (Reuters) – Venezuelan firefighters put out a blaze at the country’s biggest oil refinery today, paving the way for a restart of the facility and an investigation into the world’s deadliest refinery accident in fifteen years.
Energy Minister Rafael Ramirez has said the 645,000-barrel-per-day Amuay facility should restart within two days of the fire being extinguished. A pre-dawn blast on Saturday killed 48 people, wounded dozens and flattened hundreds of homes.
U.S. gasoline futures tumbled on Tuesday after soaring the day before, driven by the resolution of the Amuay blaze and the smaller-than-expected impact on U.S. Gulf Coast refineries from Hurricane Isaac, which is expected to make landfall there late in the day.
None of Amuay’s processing units were hit by the blaze, though refinery operations were shut down on Saturday for safety reasons. State oil company PDVSA says it has sufficient stocks to meet domestic and international market demand.
The blaze was out by mid-day, even though one fuel storage tank burned intermittently in the morning – flaring up twice only minutes after authorities had declared it extinguished.
The charred remains of three fuel tanks stood behind piles of rubble scattered by the blast at Amuay.
A refinery manager said teams were working to cool the extinguished tanks, begin an inspection of the grounds and prepare for the restart.
“As soon as I got up I left the house and said ‘Thank God they managed to put that fire out,'” said Juan Padilla, 76, a former refinery worker who lives in the neighboring Ali Primera area. “I’m going to sleep easy tonight.”
It was one of the most deadly oil industry accidents in recent years, nearing the toll of the 1997 fire at India’s Visakhapatnam refinery that killed 56 and topping the 2005 blast at BP Plc’s Texas City refinery in which 15 people died.
