Venezuela receives material from Iran to help restart refinery: official

Venezuela has received refining materials via plane shipment from Iran to help it start the catalytic cracking unit at the 310,000 barrels-per-day Cardon refinery, which is necessary to produce gasoline, an official said on Thursday.

Erling Rojas, vice minister for refining and petrochemicals in the OPEC nation’s Oil Ministry, announced the arrival of the material on Twitter. “Thanks to the support of our allies in the Islamic Republic of Iran,” he tweeted.

Venezuela is suffering from an acute shortage of motor fuel due to the near total collapse of its 1.3-million-barrels-per-day refining network after years of underinvestment and lack of maintenance, as well as U.S. sanctions that have complicated crude-for-gasoline swaps.

Planes flying from Tehran landed at the Las Piedras airport on the Paraguana peninsula in western Venezuela, where Cardon is located, Wednesday and Thursday, according to data on flight-tracking service FlightRadar24 reviewed by Reuters.

Rojas did not provide an estimate of when the Cardon refinery’s cat cracker could be up and running. Authorities are also trying to restart the cat cracker at the 146,000-barrel-per-day El Palito refinery in central Venezuela.