PARAGUANA, Venezuela - An explosion tore through Venezuela's biggest oil refinery on Saturday, killing at least 24 people, wounding more than 80 and halting operations at the huge facility in the OPEC nation's worst industrial accident in recent memory.State TV showed footage of flames and billowing clouds of smoke coming from storage tanks at the Amuay refinery. Nearby homes were damaged by the blast at 1: 15 a.m. (0645 GMT), and officials said a 10-year-old child was among the dead.
- "Unfortunately, 24 people have died, the majority of them members of our National Guard," Vice President Elias Jaua told reporters in local Falcon state. "Four people are in hospital right now, two were transferred to Zulia state and 50 people, thank God, were sent home after treatment because their injuries were not serious."
- Most of those killed in the blast, which was caused by a gas leak, were National Guard troops providing security at the sprawling Amuay facilities, officials said.
- Energy Minister Rafael Ramirez said the fire was under control, but that some fuel residue left in the tanks still needed to burn off.
Ramirez said he expected operations at the 645,000-barrel-per-day (bpd) Amuay facility to resume within two days at most.He said the blaze hit nine storage tanks holding mostly crude oil and some processed fuels including naphtha.Located on a peninsula overlooking the Caribbean sea in the west of Venezuela, Amuay is part of the Paraguana Refining Center, the second-biggest refinery complex in the world with an overall capacity of 955,000 bpd.
Amuay accounts for half of Venezuela's total domestic output, about 1.3 million bpd of refined fuels.
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