By Mariela Nava and Mircely Guanipa
MARACAIBO, May 15 (Reuters) – A fire hit a gas processing facility in Venezuela’s Lake Maracaibo on Friday, according to five sources, incident reports and videos seen by Reuters, leaving at least six workers injured.
Fires and power outages are frequent at Venezuela’s aging oil and gas facilities, especially in the western region, as a longstanding lack of foreign investment and U.S. sanctions have hindered maintenance.
Two workers had to jump into the water and suffered large burns. They were taken to a nearby hospital in the western city of Maracaibo, while four others were reported with less serious injuries, according to the reports and videos, which showed workers using a water hose to control tall flames emerging from the plant.
The fire had not been extinguished at noon, local time. State-run oil company PDVSA did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
The fire erupted during a gas depressurizing maneuver at the Lamargas compression plant in Lake Maracaibo, according to PDVSA’s internal reports of the incident, seen by Reuters.
The gas facility is part of the Lago Cinco project, operated by China Concord Resources Corp under a contract extended by PDVSA to produce crude in the lake’s shallow waters.
The facility was damaged, one of the reports said without elaborating.
Since capturing Venezuela’s deposed President Nicolas Maduro in January, the U.S. is encouraging foreign investment for Venezuela’s energy industry as part of an ambitious $100 billion reconstruction plan.
However, the frequent accidents and the deep deterioration of PDVSA’s facilities, from power plants to oilfields and refineries, continue casting doubts on what is really achievable, analysts and potential investors have warned.
(Reporting by Mariela Nava, Mircely Guanipa and Deisy Buitrago; Editing by Marianna Parraga, Rod Nickel and David Gregorio)
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