Venezuela in TW 2000

[pmulcahy11b]

Originally Posted by Legbreaker

how hard is it to destroy a refinery when a simple match can set off a catastrophic event?

Actually, you don't even need a match. In the TV series Life Without People, it shows that just leaving a functioning refinery unattended will cause its explosive demise. The sections of a refinery depend upon raw materials moving along bit by bit in an uninterrupted chain -- Most refinery explosions have taken place because some part of this progression did not happen, sometimes only for a few hours. Things get backed up, concentrations of hydrocarbons occurs where there shouldn't be concentrations, temperatures rise, and BOOM.

It's a long, tedious, difficult process to properly turn off a refinery complex. And with war at full gallop, no one is going to want to turn off functioning refineries deliberately.