The tanker that arrived in Cuba on Thursday to supply the thermoelectric plants This Monday it began to unload the Russian oil it transports at the Matanzas supertanker terminal.
The Aframax Suvorovsky Prospect, a Liberian-flagged tanker, arrived at the port of Matanzas with some 700,000 barrels of fuel oil, loaded at the Russian port of Ust-Luga, according to data obtained by the agency.Reuters of the Refinitiv Eikon ship tracking application.
The 700,000 barrels of oil are equivalent to 39,302,083 tons, which will cover Cuban electricity production for about 40 days, indicated a UNE source, who estimated the average consumption of Cuban thermoelectric plants at 240 g/MW and recalled that several plants are outside the system due to fuel shortage, breakdowns and/or maintenance.
The load of fuel that arrived on the island is valued at about 70 million dollars at market prices, according to a report from the aforementioned agency, which specified that the ship anchored in Matanzas Bay belongs to the Russian shipping conglomerate Sovcomflot, according to information from the Equasis maritime database.
The Matanzas terminal, owned by the company Unión Cuba Petróleo (CUPET), is the main energy port in the country and one of the most important in the insular Caribbean, with three deep-water docks, numbered 1 to 3, and a capacity for 150,000 tons. of payload, 70,000 and 40,000, respectively.
The Supertanker Terminal covers the aforementioned three breakwaters; a Ground Base, which brings together the technological and pumping systems; including fire protection and an auxiliary dock that houses a Bay Cleaning vessel to act in case of spills.
Crude base, with three tanks; 50 thousand tons, 30 thousand and 20 thousand; respectively, the original idea of this base was to store the national crude oil from the Varadero fields through an oil pipeline, which was built, with Soviet technology, at the end of the 80s of the 20th century; when five deposits were projected.
Supply base, with a tank of 50 thousand tons and two warehouses of 10 thousand tons, each; from which the Antonio Guiteras (Matanzas) and Ernesto Guevara (Santa Cruz del Norte) thermoelectric plants were supplied with fuel; through another oil pipeline, built in 1988, with Soviet and Spanish construction financing; but its current use is very limited due to lack of maintenance and breakdowns in the section that goes to Santa Cruz.
Supertanker warehouse base with eight tanks; from an original project of 21; built in 1998, by a subsidiary company of Petróleos Mexicanos, S. A. (PEMEX); designed for storage and distribution through an oil pipeline that links to the Cienfuegos refinery; with a bumpy construction journey since the Soviet era, works frozen in 1991 and completed with Venezuelan financing in 2007.
The link between Matanzas and Cienfuegos, built by a Soviet company, included hidden warehouses and niches to store Cuba's strategic fuel reserve; guarded by the military, but only three were executed, and they are currently protected by soldiers.
Waste treatment plant for cleaning ship tanks and recovering fuel during cleaning; but this installation, with French technology, is not working due to lack of payment to its supplier.
Caribe Plant stores imported Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) for distribution in the central provinces; It has eight tanks of 100 cubic meters each; of North American technology and another thirteen tanks of 200 cubic meters, each, with a Russian patent; while the technology for pumping and filling balloons is British.
Cuba has increased fuel imports in recent months. According toReuters, the investment responds to the objective of complementing national production and imports from its political ally Venezuela, which in turn is struggling to produce enough fuel.
The lack of fuel on the Island has already been officially recognized as one of the causes of rationing at gas stations and the blackouts that Cuban families suffer daily, and which cause growing indignation among citizens.
The tanker turned off its transponder on Sunday after beginning to unload at the Matanzas terminal. According to the agencyReuters, which used the merchant ship tracking applicationVessel Finder To investigate the maritime operation, the state-owned Cubametales usually stores crude oil and fuel in the port of Matanzas, the data showed.
For its part, Cuba's Foreign Ministry did not respond to a request for comment from the agency. The sanctions on Russian oil and fuel imposed since March by the United States and Canada, which Europe and Great Britain are advancing for this year's end, added to the usual secrecy of the Cuban authorities regarding their strategic commercial operations, could explain Havana's silence. .
Last April it emerged that Venezuela sent a shipment of diesel to Cuba, after a seven-month pause in exports of that fuel to the island.
The oil parastatal PDVSA organized a shipment of at least 190,000 barrels of diesel, according to a document consulted by the agencyReuters. According to that medium, since September 2021 Cuba has not received fuel from its political ally, so it has been forced to buy it on the open market and at higher prices.
In February, Cuba received a shipment of fuel from the Russian port of Vladivostok and unloaded at the Matanzas terminal by the Eco City of Angels oil tanker.
As Western powers increase their sanctions on Russian oil, some Latin American and Caribbean countries have continued to allow Russian oil tankers to dock at ports or receive imports of Russian crude, fuel and petrochemicals.
Although the Cuban government has not recognized a deficit in this fuel for vehicles and electricity generation from diesel engine battery units, in recent months the country had to go out and buy on the open market due to the slowdown in Venezuelan exports.
According to Refinitiv Eikon, Cuba imported about 70,000 bpd of crude oil and fuel in the first quarter of the year, below the 100,000 bpd the island generally requires to meet normal demand.
Before the pandemic, Cuba's fuel demand reached 137,000 bpd of fuel oil, diesel, gasoline, cooking gas and other refined products, according to Cuba's National Statistics Office.
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