UPDATE 1-Venezuela's PDVSA restarts El Palito oil refinery

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CARACAS, Jan 21 (Reuters) - Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA has restarted the 135,000 barrel per day El Palito refinery after a recent electrical outage took multiple units off-line, a refinery source told Reuters on Monday.

State oil company PDVSA last week said El Palito a power outage took the cat cracker offline during the weekend of Jan. 12.

The same refinery source told Reuters the cat cracker unit had failed after PDVSA tried to increase runs through the 54,000 bpd cracker.

Venezuela, the fourth-largest exporter of oil to the United States, has suffered a string of refinery outages during the last two years.

Exports of refined products to the United States have fallen noticeably during the same period, with a slump of more than 20 percent in the first 10 months of 2007. (Reporting by Brian Ellsworth; Editing by John Picinich)