Refinery outage sparks gas lines
CARACAS -- Venezuelans formed long lines this week to buy gasoline in a major provincial city after outages at a refinery prompted rare worries of supply shortages in one of the world's largest oil exporters.
Drivers in an area of at least 800,000 in and around the central city of Barquisimeto have waited up to 90 minutes to fill their tanks in lines dozens of cars long since late on Tuesday, residents said by telephone.
Gasoline supplies in the OPEC nation are a sensitive political issue for Venezuelans who are used to filling up cars for less than $2.
Leftist President Hugo Chavez underpins his popularity by lavishing oil income on the majority poor. But the opposition says he sells crude cheaply to allies such as Cuba and has stacked the state oil company with supporters with little industry experience.
Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA restricted sale of fuel to gasoline stations because of problems at the 135,000-barrel per day El Palito refinery that usually supplies the area, Diana Santiago, the head of the local gasoline chamber, said.
A union worker at El Palito said the refinery had not restarted after a power outage last week caused supply problems.
PDVSA said in a press release that it guaranteed gasoline supplies to the domestic market and warned the general population "not to be manipulated by unscrupulous sectors that want to create anxiety and nervousness among consumers."
Residents said the lines stretched from gasoline stations into city streets, disrupting traffic. Some stations ran out and many drivers lined up before dawn to obtain fuel in a country that is one of the largest U.S. oil suppliers.
"People are really nervous. There are too many lines and many stations are running out and closing," said Elimir Hernandez, a truck driver who waited more than an hour for fuel.
Concerns over the industry's management have intensified this year.
Chavez decreed the nationalization of multibillion-dollar foreign-run projects, forcing major U.S. companies Exxon Mobil and ConocoPhillips to leave a country with some of the largest reserves outside the Middle East.
The last time there was any major supply interruption was in 2003 during an oil strike aimed at toppling Chavez. But Venezuelans often also recall deadly riots sparked by a gasoline price hike in 1989.
"This problem definitively shows the state of refineries in Venezuela," said one industry analyst familiar with the operations, who asked not to be named to avoid drawing his company into a controversy.
The Venezuelan analyst added that PDVSA should be able to provide adequate electricity to its refineries and should have been ready to keep up supplies with either inventories or a contingency plan to ship fuel from other refineries.