Early reports said the fire at the Cardon facility started in a gas line. The facility can process 310,000 barrels of oil per day when operational.
At 3:25 PM on Tuesday, October 6, a natural gas line supplying Cardón refinery’s boilers ruptured, sparking a fire and, according to multiple sources, explosions at the facilitys diesel hydrotreater unit.
The entire facility, part of the 955,000-bpd Paraguaná Refining Center, ended up placed under emergency shutdown as a precaution.
Investigation Team
PDVSA formed an investigation committee into the cause of the rupture but has given no restart timeline. Some early, unofficial local reporting attributed the fires origin to a compressor failure in the lubricants area; PDVSAs official account centers on the gas line rupture.
Cardón is in Punto Fijo in Falcón state and is half of the Paraguaná Refining Center. The refinery produces gasoline and diesel/gasoil.
Between 3:20–3:25 p.m. local time on October 6, a gas line tied to the diesel hydrotreater (gasoil unit) opened or ruptured. Sources described explosions, a rapid fire, and an immediate halt of the whole refinery, including boilers. Workers evacuated.
The plant was already partially down. A crude distillation unit and the fluid catalytic cracker had been stopped last month for lack of feedstock.
An explosion followed by a fire shut down Venezuela’s second-largest oil refinery. There were no injuries in the incident.
Source: Screen capture
Capacity is 310,000 barrels per day. It is the second-largest Venezuelan refinery after Amuay (645,000 bpd). Together with the small Bajo Grande asphalt plant, they form the Paraguaná complex, rated about 955,000 bpd.
Actual runs have been far below nameplate for years, according to a report in Energy News Beat.
In 2025 industry reporting put Cardón’s FCC near 26,000 bpd (roughly 30 percent of that unit) and the reformer near 28,000 bpd. System-wide, PDVSA’s network was processing about 450,000 bpd in February (35 percent of roughly 1.29 million bpd installed) and about 399,000 bpd in April (31 percent). Paraguaná itself was at around 237,000–287,000 bpd in those periods, with only a fraction of distillation and cracking units online.