What happened

A fire broke out at the Cardón refinery at about 15:25 local time after a reported rupture in or near a gas line connected to the diesel hydrotreater. Workers were evacuated and refinery operations, including the boilers, were halted. Local reporting and later wire-service accounts said firefighters brought the blaze under control in less than an hour, around 16:00, and no injuries were reported. PDVSA had not issued a detailed public assessment of damage or a restart schedule in the reviewed reporting. The refinery's 310,000-barrel-per-day nameplate capacity should not be read as the volume taken offline: Reuters sources said its actual throughput was already substantially lower and that major processing units were offline for lack of feedstock. No reviewed source described the event as an attack; this record classifies it as a reported industrial process fire pending a fuller operator assessment.

When cited sources give different casualty, damage or spill figures for this event, they’re reported side by side above rather than merged into one number. See how confidence levels work.