Petrocedeño has been out of service since November 19, 2025. The atmospheric distillation column went down after the fire that month, and as of mid-May the unit was still in segregation mode. Blend 17 inventory at the facility was around 1.3 million barrels, accumulated while production has been on hold.
That leaves Petropiar carrying the upgrading load for the system. As of mid-May, Petropiar was running 123,000 barrels per day of SHB plus 20,000 barrels per day of VGO — the main upgrader output in the country at that point. The facility is inside a scheduled maintenance window that runs through June 15.
Petromonagas is operational on blending, not upgrading, producing 110,000 barrels per day of Merey 16 from XP residue and diluent. The diluent inventory at the facility was sitting at 30,000 barrels in mid-May. At 21,400 barrels per day of consumption, that is less than a day and a half of cover. Petro Sinovensa is producing 176,700 barrels per day of Merey 16 with around 3.5 days of diluent on the tank. Petro San Felix is in standby with DCO tanks near capacity.
This is the configuration behind April's 1.23 million barrel per day export number. One upgrader producing SHB. Two blenders producing Merey 16. One upgrader six months into an outage. One facility in standby. The system is moving the headline volume.
What's not visible in the export totals is the concentration of risk in that configuration. If Petropiar slips its June 15 maintenance close, SHB production goes with it. If a single HVN cargo gets delayed at Jose — and there were two stoppages in April for high shore tank inventory — Petro Monagas runs out of diluent within roughly 36 hours at current rates.
The fields can produce more extra-heavy crude than the upgrading and blending capacity at the terminals can currently convert to a saleable barrel. The constraint sits downstream. April's print was loaded under those conditions, and the capacity to repeat it depends on a tight set of operational variables holding.