Although the Government is trying to convince Venezuelans that the Amuay disaster is something normal and has little to do with bad management or bad maintenance, evidence seems to show the opposite and is mounting fast. The leak of the report by the refinery’s underwriter is quite damming, it makes for great reading for geeky types. (Yes, like me!)
I will not bore you with the details, but I will note that the report says on page 8, that while US$1 billion was budgeted for maintenance, only US$314 million was actually spent. Less than US$ 2 billion was spent in the last four years. So, when Asdrubal Chavez boasts that US$ 4 billion were spent on maintenance in the same period, he clearly is talking about how much was budgeted, not spent (Aren’t you glad he is in charge of he electric network now? Just kidding!)
Part of the problem is that Bariven, the PDVSA affiliate in charge of imports, is now in charge of all the food imports of PDVAL, thus it’s just in time ability of yesteryear is no longer there. The result, even if maintenance needs to be done, there are no materials for it. Somewhere else in the report i t says that materials procurement now takes 60 weeks. Yes, over one year for imported materials and only, yes only 30 weeks for local materials. Sounds like a dysfunctional company to me.
The report also says that the target of PDVSA was to have 80% of the maintenance be preventive and 20% corrective. However, the report concludes that it ended up being 69% corrective, 31% preventive.
The report says that major maintenance suffers delays of one to two years, while routine maintenance had a low in 2009, it has no evidence that this was corrected, other than it was “reported” to management, which probably was out campaigning.
These people should be fired!
The report says that fire pump testing has not been performed yearly as required (page 14) and describes fires and explosions that are anything but “normal”
But Chavistas seem now convince that the sinking of the Adan Pearl is “normal”, that the Cavim weapon factory exploding is “normal”, that Conviasa’s six accidents in four years are “normal”, that half a billion dollars stolen from PDVSA’s pension funds is “normal”, or $800,000 in bills in suitcase is also “normal” and that daily blackouts all over the country are “normal”.
What is not “normal” is how this people think a country should be run.
The Devil's Excrement 