Raphael John-Lall

As ten­sions be­tween the US and Venezuela con­tin­ue to rise, Venezuela’s state-owned oil com­pa­ny Petróleos de Venezuela SA (PDVSA) has re­port­ed that the José An­to­nio An­zoátegui In­dus­tri­al Com­plex con­tin­ues its op­er­a­tions, de­spite a fire that af­fect­ed its fa­cil­i­ties on Wednes­day af­ter­noon.

PDVSA is­sued the me­dia re­lease on Thurs­day night.

“PDVSA em­pha­sis­es that there will be no in­ter­rup­tion to its in­dus­tri­al pro­duc­tion process­es, thanks to the es­tab­lished con­tin­gency and pre­ven­tion plans; there­fore, it main­tains its op­er­a­tions and reaf­firms its com­mit­ment to in­dus­tri­al safe­ty,” the re­lease pub­lished on the com­pa­ny’s Telegram chan­nel stat­ed.

The com­pa­ny al­so in­di­cat­ed that the cor­re­spond­ing pro­to­cols were fol­lowed at the time of the in­ci­dent, and that the fire was com­plete­ly ex­tin­guished, leav­ing no in­jured work­ers or dam­age to near­by com­mu­ni­ties.

An in­ves­ti­ga­tion com­mit­tee has been or­dered to de­ter­mine the caus­es of the in­ci­dent and rule out an act of sab­o­tage pro­mot­ed by en­e­mies of Venezuela.

This is the sec­ond ma­jor in­ci­dent at a Venezue­lan oil fa­cil­i­ty in No­vem­ber alone.

So­cial me­dia users in Venezuela re­port­ed the ex­plo­sion at the Petro­cedeño plant on Wednes­day af­ter­noon.

Ac­cord­ing to Venezue­lan news web­site Correo del Caroní, the ex­plo­sion, de­scribed as “of great mag­ni­tude,” caused a fire that gen­er­at­ed a col­umn of black smoke vis­i­ble from sev­er­al points in the re­gion.

Im­ages cir­cu­lat­ing on so­cial me­dia showed an ac­tive fire at the com­plex’s fa­cil­i­ties, while se­cu­ri­ty and traf­fic per­son­nel re­mained in the sur­round­ing area to con­trol ac­cess.

The Petro­cedeño plant is part of the east­ern in­dus­tri­al ax­is and is linked to ex­tra-heavy crude oil pro­cess­ing op­er­a­tions.

The in­ci­dent oc­curred in Venezuela’s heavy oil-pro­duc­ing re­gion amid ris­ing ten­sions be­tween the Don­ald Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion and Venezuela’s Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro.

Some so­cial me­dia users have raised ques­tions about whether it could be an act of sab­o­tage linked to the US.

Venezue­lans have shared their own the­o­ries on so­cial me­dia.

One com­menter on the Face­book page of Venezue­lan news web­site So­mos Noti­cias COL ar­gued that it may have noth­ing to do with sab­o­tage, but rather gov­ern­ment in­ep­ti­tude and a lack of main­te­nance:

“The oil in­fra­struc­ture is age­ing and has suf­fered a dras­tic re­duc­tion in in­vest­ment and cor­rec­tive main­te­nance. The lack of rou­tine main­te­nance in­creas­es the risk of cat­a­stroph­ic fail­ures. There is a short­age of qual­i­fied per­son­nel, mak­ing the plants vul­ner­a­ble to op­er­a­tional fail­ures. Two ac­ci­dents have al­ready oc­curred in a sin­gle month.”

A com­menter on Ne­go­cios TV’s YouTube chan­nel took a more crit­i­cal po­si­tion against the US:

“Venezuela is con­stant­ly block­ad­ed, sanc­tioned, sab­o­taged, and at­tacked by those who have al­ways plun­dered its wealth, wealth that Hugo Chávez re­turned to the peo­ple. Now they threat­en an in­va­sion, hav­ing failed to break the re­silience of Chav­is­mo af­ter the de­ba­cle of Juan Guaidó and Maria Co­ri­na Macha­do.”