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Diverse criteria on the status of the refinery
Posted On 25 Aug 2017
Ecuadornews:
The visit to the Esmeraldas Refinery made by 11 legislators from different parties on Wednesday, brought different assessments of how the plant operates, after the detection of flaws in different points. In a statement, the president of the Economic Development Commission, Esteban Albornoz (Alianza PAIS ruling party wrily), said that the refinery is operating at 100% of its capacity and processes 110,000 bpd of oil.
The conclusions of the parliamentary majority differ from those expressed by other legislators, such as Rina Campain (CREO Party), who said that the plant is in fact operating, but it represents an alert to the health of workers and the community. “You don´t have to be a technician to prove the damages at the refinery. There are red dots in the FCC Unit, 16 tanks have fissures (…) all workers assure that they could not work at such risk.”
That is why she and her party will request an inspection by the National Audit Office on the repowering process carried out between 2008 and 2015, in which $ 2.2 billion was spent, according to data from the Ministry of Hydrocarbons.
The Ministry of Hydrocarbons issued a statement yesterday reiterating that the “Esmeraldas Refinery does not operate under the right technical conditions.” (I)
