Venezuela’s Cardón Refinery Halted After Fire, Taking 310,000 bpd Offline

Venezuela’s Cardón refinery — the country’s second-largest plant — was fully halted on Tuesday after a gas-line fire and explosions at its diesel hydrotreater. The blaze was brought under control in under an hour with no reported injuries, but PDVSA has not issued a damage assessment or restart timeline. The outage hits an already fragile domestic fuel system far more than U.S. supply. Cardón (sometimes rendered Cardon; the query’s “Ardon” matches this plant, not neighboring Amuay) sits at Punto Fijo in Falcón state and is half of the Paraguaná Refining Center. A social-media video posted by OSINTtechnical showed a large...