Venezuela's oil industry: Spilling over ON FEBRUARY 4th Hugo Chávez, Venezuela's president, held festivities to celebrate the anniversary of a failed coup attempt he led in 1992. He had busloads of public workers brought into Caracas for the occasion. Among them were high-ranking employees of PDVSA, the state oil company. That same day, a pipeline carrying pressurised oil fractured in the state of Monagas. The crude soared 25 metres (82 feet) into the air and flowed for a full day. Anywhere from 40,000-120,000 barrels poured into a river that supplies drinking and irrigation water. Some 550,000 people now lack water at home. Although city-dwellers can fetch it from drums that PDVSA is leaving in streets, people in remote areas are going without. It may take months to clean the supply. Few details are available about the spill's cause, size or the damage it has inflicted. PDVSA's website quotes Alejandro Hitcher, the environment minister, ruling out an "environmental disaster." But there has been little further communication. PDVSA's spokesman neither answers his phone nor returns calls to his office. A representative of the Monagas government says no one can comment because "we're working short hours on account of the water situation," though it is providing updates on Twitter. That has left the spill ripe for speculation in a heated political climate. It will surely provide ammunition for Henrique Capriles, a state governor who won the opposition's primary on February 12th and became the challenger to Mr Chávez in the October presidential election. PDVSA has struggled under Mr Chávez. In 2002 its workers went on strike to try to force him from office. In response, he fired 18,000 PDVSA employees, including senior managers. He then stuffed the company with tens of thousands of loyalists from what would later become his United Socialist Party (PSUV). Since then oil output has stagnated, and accidents are on the rise. According to Eddie Ramírez, one of the sacked managers, the "old" PDVSA averaged less than two accidents per million man-hours. In 2010 there were 9.4 accidents and almost six deaths per million man-hours. In December 15 people died after petrol leaking from a PDVSA tanker caught fire on a main road. A full account of the latest spill is a long way off. But José Bodas, the head of the oil workers" union, blames corrosion and faulty maintenance. "PDVSA is falling to pieces," he says. As long as you're a member of the PSUV, they don't care if you're incompetent. Mr Hitcher insists that no oil has reached the San Juan river, which flows into the ocean. But Mr Bodas says it is already on its way.