摘要：CARACAS (Bloomberg) -- Rolling blackouts across much of the country that started on March 7 paralyzed most of the country’s oil wells and rigs, which have slowly come back online. Oil output averaged less than 600,000 bpd during the blackouts, the people said, who asked not to be identified because the information isn’t public. For the full month, daily production was 890,000 bbl, according to a Bloomberg survey of officials, analysts and ship-tracking data. The loss of production due to the blackouts deals another blow to Venezuela’s already-crippled oil industry, already reeling from years of mismanagement and U.S. sanctions that removed its biggest customer. The nation’s crude output, one of the few sources of cash for Nicolas Maduro’s regime, has tumbled by two-thirds since before PDVSA workers went on strike in December 2002. Near the Orinoco basin in the East, where four out of every five barrels is pumped, heavy tar-like oil has begun to clog pipelines and tanks after the heating system lost power, according to Wills Rangel, a former PDVSA board director and president of the United Workers Federation of Oil, Gas and Related Derivatives of Venezuela. Cleaning or removing the pipes could take months, he said. “Damage caused by the blackouts at the Orinoco Belt oil fields is substantial,” Rangel said in an interview.
