Venezuela’s Amuay refinery, the country’s largest, began restarting processing units after a power outage forced it to shut down on June 29, according to Reuters reporting. The restoration narrows the risk of an extended loss of refining capacity, but it does not resolve wider electricity problems that were still limiting operations at another refinery and a neighboring petrochemical complex.
The incident puts the immediate pressure on Venezuela’s domestic fuel system rather than its crude exports. The oil ministry said the earthquakes and subsequent power disruption had not affected national crude-production levels or exports. But Amuay is a major domestic processing site, and Reuters reported that fuel and petrochemical output could fall short of demand if electricity instability prevents facilities from sustaining operations.
Power returned, but no full restart timetable was reported
Workers and residents told Reuters in a report carried by The Standard that the outage shuttered Amuay after seismic disruption strained Venezuela’s power infrastructure. Electric service returned later the same day, and workers started bringing operational units back online, with crude-distillation plants a particular focus.
That update is more limited than a declaration of full recovery. Neither the reporting nor the oil ministry statement described a complete restart, specified how much crude Amuay was processing after power was restored, or gave a timetable for returning all units to service. There was also no reported direct confirmation from state oil company PDVSA detailing the shutdown’s technical cause or the refinery’s status after restart work began.
The distinction is operationally important. A refinery’s return from a power-related shutdown is not a single switch: individual processing units can be restarted at different times, and the site’s output depends on stable power and the ability to keep those units running. In this case, the available accounts establish that restart work had begun, not that Amuay had returned to normal rates.
Nameplate capacity is not the volume at risk
Amuay has nameplate capacity of 645,000 barrels a day and forms part of the 955,000-barrel-per-day Paraguana Refining Center. Yet it had been processing about 137,000 barrels a day before the earthquakes, according to the Reuters account. That means its reported pre-disruption throughput was roughly 21% of its stated nameplate capacity.
The figures frame the potential supply disruption more accurately than capacity alone. It would be wrong to treat the outage as a loss of 645,000 barrels a day of active refinery output. On the other hand, the roughly 137,000 barrels a day reportedly being processed before the event remains material for a domestic market dependent on functioning refineries and distribution infrastructure.
The gap between design capacity and reported throughput also limits what can be inferred from the restart. Restoring electricity to Amuay does not indicate whether production immediately returned to its prior 137,000-barrel-per-day pace, rose above it, or remained below it. The reports provided no post-outage operating rate.
Other facilities remained constrained
The broader power problem had not been resolved across the sector. Reuters reported that the 146,000-barrel-per-day El Palito refinery and the nearby Moron Petrochemical Complex had been unable to fully restart because electricity supply remained unstable. A separate Reuters-syndicated account published by Devdiscourse described the same pattern: restored power at Amuay and restart activity there, alongside continuing constraints elsewhere.
Workers also cited insufficient water supplies for power plants and industries in Falcon state, where Amuay is located, as a factor affecting operations. That claim was attributed to workers in the Reuters reporting, rather than to PDVSA or the electricity authorities, and the reports did not establish a technical root cause for the outage.
The practical exposure is therefore concentrated in refined products and petrochemicals. Venezuela can continue producing and exporting crude while still facing difficulty turning crude into fuel and chemical products for local consumption. The oil ministry’s assertion that crude production and exports were unaffected addresses the upstream and export side of the oil business; it does not establish that domestic refining, fuel availability or petrochemical production were unaffected.
Recurring power risk has disrupted refining before
The latest outage follows an earlier reported refinery interruption. In June 2025, Reuters reported that a power blackout halted operations at Cardon, Venezuela’s second-largest refinery, according to a Reuters account published by The Straits Times. That was a separate event and does not explain the Amuay shutdown, but it provides context for the exposure of Venezuelan refining operations to electricity disruptions.
For now, the key reported facts are narrower: Amuay lost power, electricity later returned, and restart work began. El Palito and Moron, meanwhile, remained unable to fully restart amid unstable electricity supply.
