Venezuela refinery briefly offline due to power

Units at Venezuela's 300,000 barrels-per-day Cardon oil refinery went offline for several hours on Friday due to a power outage, a person familiar with the plant's operations said on Saturday. About half the state-run refinery's units were affected, but the key cat cracker unit continued operating during the outage, he added. 'The blackout lasted just a few hours in the afternoon (on Friday). Everything is already back to normal,' he said. Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA has battled frequent output interruptions at its refineries over the last few years due mainly to power failures. Venezuela is an OPEC member and one of the largest oil exporters to the United States.