Iranian engineers, whose “operational negligence” allegedly caused an oil spill in one of Venezuela’s main refineries in November, helped the socialist regime there cover up the accident, the Argentine outlet Infobae revealed Tuesday.
According to information collected by Infobae, the oil spill occurred in November at Venezuela’s Amuay refinery, located in the northwestern state of Falcón, and was caused by a “significant leak” in one of the refinery’s tanks. Infobae stated that the Venezuelan government tried to keep the spill an “absolute secret” until mid-November, pointing out that Iranian personnel already operating at the refinery “were initially required to respond quickly to the leak.”
Infobae stressed that Iran, which has enjoyed growing influence in Venezuela, tends to operate as a “partner in the shadows” to Caracas due to the oil sanctions imposed on the rogue Islamic regime. While Iranian personnel are routinely spotted in Venezuelan refineries, “this time, they would even have been directly responsible for the spill,” leading the regime to resort to them “as saviors,” the outlet added.
Amuay is part of the Paraguaná Refining Center, Venezuela’s largest refining complex and one of the world’s largest. As is the case with Venezuela’s other refineries, decades of socialist mismanagement left Amuay in a near-ruined state. In 2012, a massive gas explosion in Amuay left 48 dead and more than a hundred injured.
The socialist-mismanaged state of Venezuela’s oil refineries has led to frequent oil spills that have caused significant damages to the country’s environment and fauna. The frequent oil spills are often difficult to fully assess due to dictator Nicolás Maduro’s fierce censorship. Local journalists have denounced that Venezuelan law enforcement officials have forced them to delete pictures and footage of past spills.
Some of the areas affected by the spills, such as those affected by a major one that occurred in 2020, could take at least 50 years to fully recover, according to experts’ assessment.
In recent years, the Maduro regime enlisted the aid of Iran, one of its key allies and anti-U.S. ideological peers, to repair Venezuela’s refineries. The regimes signed a roughly $107 million deal in 2022 to have Iranian workers repair El Palito, another of Venezuela’s rundown refineries. After the repairs were finished in October 2022, Iran reportedly began to refine upwards of 100,000 barrels of its own oil at El Palito.
Infobae listed several individuals linked to socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro and his top brass who were allegedly involved in Iran’s Amuay oil spill coverup — including Alex Saab, Maduro’s top money launderer and new Industries Minister. Saab was released and sent back to Caracas by the outgoing administration of U.S. President Joe Biden as part of a prisoner swap deal with the Maduro regime. At the time of his release, Saab was undergoing trial proceedings in a U.S. court on charges of using the American financial system to launder $350 million from Venezuela’s state coffers.
According to the Biden administration, Saab’s release would allegedly help curb the large flow of Venezuelan migrants entering the United States by addressing the “root causes of migration.”
The outlet also listed Jorge Giménez Ochoa, current president of Venezuela’s National Soccer Federation, as an individual linked with the socialist regime with knowledge of the coverup. Infobae described Giménez, a Venezuelan-Spaniard dual citizen, as one of the most powerful men in the socialist regime and Vice President Delcy Rodríguez’s frontman.
The outlet noted that Giménez is also involved in an ongoing corruption probe launched by Spanish authorities last year and stands accused of ordering the censorship of anti-regime banners and messages at Venezuelan soccer games.
The head of Venezuela’s state-owned oil company PDVSA, Héctor Obregón Pérez, is also listed as one of the individuals involved in the coverup according to Infobae.
The outlet stated that the listed individuals and Vice President Rodríguez are in “permanent” contact with Iran’s ambassador to Caracas Hojat Soltani, who “coordinates all Iranian movement in Venezuelan lands: technology, oil, communications, defense.” Soltani centralizes all requirements in his office, where dozens of regime hierarchs visit him.
According to Infobae, the Maduro regime’s top brass fears that a more significant spill “will cause greater environmental losses with the potential lawsuits that these would entail.”
“Soltani has more and more power. And of course he will be there this January 10 to celebrate Maduro [who is slated to be inaugurated for a new illegitimate term on that day],” an unidentified insider source from the Miraflores presidential palace told Infobae. “What we don’t know, at this point, if he will do it [the oath] before the Bolivarian or Iranian Constitution.”
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.
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