Venezuela's second-largest refinery halted due to power blackout, sources say

(Reuters) -Venezuela's second-largest refinery, the 310,000-barrel-per-day Cardon plant operated by state company PDVSA, remained halted on Monday after a power blackout, three sources with knowledge of its operations said.

Venezuela's aging refining network has frequent outages after years on insufficient investment, mismanagement and U.S. sanctions preventing the import of spare parts. In recent months, Cardon has been key to processing feedstock from some of the Orinoco Belt's heavy crude projects.

The blackout began early in the morning and did not affect Cardon's neighboring refinery, the 645,000-bpd Amuay plant, one of the sources said. In the afternoon, power service to the facility was restored and workers began preparations for restarting some units, but the facility remained suspended, according to another source.

"We have power back in the refinery, but there is no steam or air yet," the person said, referring to the supply of industrial services to the facility, which is required to restart operational units.

(Reporting by Reuters staff; Editing by Mark Porter and Marguerita Choy)

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