Venezuela Orinoco oil upgrader failure lowers output
Mon Nov 16, 2009 12:24pm EST
CARACAS, Nov 16 (Reuters) - Venezuela's Petroanzoategui oil upgrader is down 44,000 barrels a day of production since Friday because of problems with a boiler, causing storage issues for the field's extra-heavy crude, sources said.
The Petroanzoategui field and upgrader in the vast Orinoco belt of tar-like crude was controlled by ConocoPhillips (COP.N) until being nationalized in 2007 and is now owned by Venezuela's PDVSA.
"Processing is at 15 tonnes per day and the capacity is 22 tonnes," said a shipping trader with knowledge of the project's operations. In barrels, the feeding capacity of Petroanzoategui is 130,000 bpd.
Repair teams had unsuccessfully tried to fix the boiler since Friday, said a source at the company. He did not give an estimated date to return the upgrader to full production.
Production from the Orinoco region's four upgraders was close to its full capacity of 620,000 bpd in August, but dropped from October when the 180,000 bpd PetroPiar upgrader, part owned by Chevron (CVX.N), went offline for planned maintenance.
The outages are causing a bottleneck of the heavy crude, with the local Zuata storage tanks almost full, the company source said.
"There has been less tanker activity in Jose since last week, the trader said, referring to a drop in exports of upgraded crude from the Jose storage center in the region.
PDVSA officials were not available for comment.
(Reporting by Marianna Parraga; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)
