According to unnamed sources who spoke to Reuters, a power outage this week stopped operations at the Petropiar crude upgrader that PDVSA runs via a joint venture with Chevron. Separately, PDVSA postponed the restart of the Petromonagas and Petrocedeno facilities because of depressed oil prices. Petromonagas is a joint venture of PDVSA with Rosneft, which earlier this year sold all its interests in Venezuela to a newly formed state firm called Roszarubezhneft. Petrocedeno is a partnership between PDVSA, French Total, and Norway’s Equinor. A fourth upgrader in the Orinoco Belt, Sinovensa, was also halted this week and later restarted, according to the Reuters sources, but at a reduced rate of just 72,000 bpd. Crude oil upgraders are facilities where extra heavy oil of the type that is produced in Venezuela’s Orinoco Belt is mixed with lighter hydrocarbons to make it liquid and easier to transport. The upgrader problem is […]