“Methane gas at 24%, H2S gas (hydrogen sulfide) 4%. We’re dying.”
Late Friday night, 24 August, Rigoberto Colina García, a 29-year-old worker at a lubricant company just outside the Amuay Refinery compound in Venezuela’s Falcon State, had sent this message on his Blackberry. (La República, 28Aug12) Some hours later, at 1:11 AM Saturday, a tremendous explosion killed over 40 people sleeping or working in buildings beyond the refinery’s perimeter, including Rigoberto and four of his co-workers.
This is the worst disaster in Venezuela’s modern oil history, and one of the worst refinery accidents ever worldwide. This week, across Venezuela, President Chavez and PDVSA leadership have been targets of public criticism and outrage.
Clearly, industrial and political policies of PDVSA and the Venezuelan state contributed to this disaster. Meanwhile, yesterday I found a somewhat tangential, but particularly unseemly fact. It seems that President Chavez’ only recent involvement with Amuay in the months preceding this disaster had nothing to do with improving the productivity of the facility, much less the safety of workers and neighboring citizens. No, rather, his involvement was a scheme to bolster PDVSA’s material support for the dictatorial regime of Syria’s Assad in suppressing the popular revolution there. This scheme apparently accounts for the origin of some of the naphtha that burned for four days following the explosion. But first, the facts of the disaster, in so far as they are known. Continue reading
The Global Barrel 