By Mircely Guanipa , Tibisay Romero and Deisy Buitrago

PUNTO FIJO/EL PALITO, Venezuela, July 29 (Reuters) - The Paraguana Refining Center in Western Venezuela once symbolized the country's oil wealth and its ambition to turn vast crude reserves into fuels and export revenue.

Today, the 955,000-barrel-per-day complex in Falcon state runs at a fraction of capacity, a decline decades in the making and unrelated to the strong earthquakes that struck Venezuela last month.

In the months before the quakes, Reuters visited the area surrounding the Amuay and Cardon refineries ‌that make up the Paraguana complex, along with one of Venezuela's other two active refineries, and interviewed four dozen workers, contractors, residents and experts.

One worker at the 645,000-barrel-per-day (bpd) Amuay refinery said everything looks "ugly and rusty." Open-air waste pits are nearly full. Residue seeps across ‌pipelines and valve stations. Workers say years of underinvestment, equipment failures and shortages have left Paraguana struggling to produce the fuel Venezuelans need.

The reporting revealed festering decay and little ongoing maintenance at all three facilities, underscoring the monumental challenges Venezuela faces in restoring its oil infrastructure to the benefit of its citizens, even as President Donald Trump promises $100 billion in investments by ​foreign oil companies.

Venezuela's refineries are at once among its most dilapidated assets and the most critical to Venezuelan consumers. Yet these refineries are among the least likely to see foreign investment any time soon, industry executives and analysts told Reuters.

Recovery from the two earthquakes, which killed more than 5,000 people and caused widespread destruction, has further complicated the refineries' outlook, said Oswaldo Felizzola, a Venezuelan energy analyst.

"Right now, the priority clearly seems to be rebuilding and dealing with all the devastation the earthquakes caused across the country," he said.

He said any major investments in refining would now likely be pushed into 2027 and beyond as the government focuses on oil production. Fully restoring refining capacity would require at least $20 billion, Felizzola said, an estimate echoed by other industry experts Reuters interviewed.

NEWFOUND INTEREST IN VENEZUELA

Some U.S. and multinational oil companies have expressed interest in Venezuela this year after the U.S. ousted socialist President Nicolas Maduro in a January 3 raid. But they ‌have little incentive to rehabilitate local refineries when the U.S. has its own refineries able to process ⁠Venezuela's challenging heavy sour crude grades.