A restart to production at Venezuela's largest oil refinery, closed since Saturday by the world's deadliest refinery accident in 15 years, could take another two to three days although an exact date was unknown.Energy Minister Rafael Ramirez has said fires at the Amuay refinery, where 48 people died, had been extinguished and workers were preparing to restart production.
The process could take "two or three days", Mr Ramirez said, although officials said the final timing could not be determined while parts of the facility continued to cool.
"While the cooling efforts continue, we can't know an exact date," said an official from state oil company PDVSA, which runs the 645,000 barrels per day refinery.
Meantime, authorities will continue to investigate what may have caused the gas leak that led to the blast.
In addition to those killed, the pre-dawn explosion destroyed hundreds of nearby homes. The accident was the most deadly for the global oil industry in recent years, nearing the toll of a 1997 fire at India's Visakhapatnam refinery, which killed 56.
Ahead of presidential elections in October, opponents of President Hugo Chavez have seized upon the blast to criticise what they say is poor upkeep of facilities in the oil industry, the motor of Venezuela's economy.
Before Saturday's blast, the country's refineries have routinely suffered lesser accidents and numerous unplanned outages.
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Source: http://www.oilandgaseurasia.com/news/p/0/news/16379/
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