CARACAS, (Reuters) – Technical personnel at Venezuela’s state-run oil company PDVSA and firefighters were putting out a fire on a natural gas pipeline in the country’s east, Oil Minister Tareck El Aissami said on Twitter yesterday.
In his comments on Twitter, El Aissami called the fire “a new attack” on the gas system.
His comments on Twitter did not specify which pipeline was on fire. However, three industry sources said that he was referring to a fire on a section of a pipeline in the state of Monagas.
That fire began during the late afternoon on Saturday on a section of the pipeline near the Aguasay 5A plant, according to an internal report dated July 16 from PDVSA, as state-owned Petroleos de Venezuela is known, and reviewed by Reuters.
El Aissami attributed the fire to unidentified terrorist groups, saying “It’s the same terrorist groups as always, who have acted against the national interest to affect the life of our people.”
Authorities in Venezuela, which has the world’s largest oil reserves, regularly attribute blackouts and fires to sabotage by terrorist groups, though government critics say they are caused by years of underinvestment and bad management.
El Aissami did not specify whether the fire impacted oil operations.
“In this moment we are suffocating the fire provoked by this criminal action, to regularize the service of this infrastructure,” the minister said.
The pipeline feeds gas to the Jose Antonio Anzoategui petrochemical complex near the city of Barcelona. The industry sources said the fire and lack of gas was affecting operations at the plant.
