The Government of Venezuela denounced this Saturday an attempted sabotage by Colombia to the El Palito refinery, by manipulating the electrical system, to prevent the alarms from going off in the event of any failure in the plant.
The Oil Minister, Tareck El Aissami, assured, through a broadcast on the public channel Venezolana de Televisión (VTV), that the action “was planned” from Colombia, with the consent and complicity of the Government of Iván Duque, who intended a “tragedy” of “incalculable magnitudes.”
“These are macabre plans organized from Colombian territory, with the consent and complicity of the decadent government of President Iván Duque,” insisted the official from the facilities of the El Palito refinery, one of the largest in the country.
According to El Aissami, if the plan had succeeded, the protection systems would be inhibited and, as a consequence, the plant’s main power plant would explode, a purpose – he assured – that was pursued with manipulation.
“In the event of any failure in the refinery’s electrical system, the protection systems were inhibited from acting and resulted in the explosion of the main plant, which would not only have left the refinery without electricity, but also an explosion inside the refinery.” of these facilities,” he explained.
El Aissami, who reiterated that the act “neutralized” by government technical personnel and that he attributes to Duque “was seeking to cause catastrophic damage to these PDVSA facilities,” said that, in addition, they have been detected, in other substations of the plant, “Manipulations also to protection systems”.
“It was a plan that was going to be activated with a programmed failure and, after that failure was perpetrated, that the protection systems did not act and the consequence was the explosion (…) causing not only the total destruction of the downtown refinery of the country, but also that the lives of our workers would have been in danger,” he said.
The official stated that the sabotage was neutralized thanks to the engineers and workers of the oil station, where the security and control of the electrical system has been redoubled, “to guarantee operational stability to continue producing fuel.”
In addition, he called on “the oil working class” in all areas of the industry to remain vigilant, since “the enemy and the outgoing Government of Colombia have an obsession with our industry and intend to do harm.”
