Advance inMatanzas the construction of a first oil deposit after the great brutalfire which in August 2022 destroyed four tanks at the Supertanker Base of that province, the largest fuel storage facility in Cuba.
The new deposit,whose construction should take approximately a year and a half, will have an underground electrical system that will offer safer conditions in the handling of crude oil.
It will also have an internal floating aluminum membrane and a geodesic dome. The tank will be surrounded by an earth and concrete dam, located about 110 meters from the tank, a structure that in the event of an accident will allow it to collect one and a half times the capacity of the tank.
"We are in the second phase of the recovery process since in the first stage we focused on demolishing the facilities affected by the fire and creating conditions for the construction of the new tanks," he explained in statements toXinhua the director of the Territorial Division of Fuel Marketing, Rigel Rodríguez, a chemical engineer who is in charge of the base's work.
Images published by the aforementioned news agency show the work of several brigades of workers working on the foundry of the base of the new tank, which must be completed in the coming days to begin assembling the tank, whose capacity will be slightly lower than those destroyed. but similar in structure.
The new warehouse is being erected to make up for the deficit of 200 thousand cubic meters of storage caused by the incident., which destroyed four tanks of 50 thousand cubic meters each.
The total cost of the recovery of the Supertanker Base, located about 100 kilometers east of Havana and on the edge of Matanzas Bay,It is estimated so far at around 91 million dollars and around 4,000 million pesos.
Rigel Rodríguez explained that, thanks to the installation of 700 meters of 20-inch pipes, they managed to restart operations at pier one, which allowed the base to be kept operational in parallel with the reconstruction.
"We have continued unloading fuel ships and loading others with national crude oil to be able to guarantee the country's electricity generation," he stressed.
The recovery process underway should last in total about four years, sinceIn addition to building four new tanks, it includes a new physical-chemical analysis laboratory, the pipe network that connects to the docks and the rehabilitation of the workshops.of mechanics, electricity and machining.
In October of last year, Rígel Rodríguez, in statements to Granma, anticipated that the reconstruction of the first tank could begin before the end of 2022, after the demolition of the fragments of the metal walls of the four fuel tanks damaged by the fire.
The tragedy
The Supertanker Base fire occurred on the afternoon of August 5, 2022, when lightning struck a tank with thousands of gallons of crude oil. The fire spread to three other tanks and consumed fuel until August 10.
The tragedy left 17 dead - the remains of 14 of them could not be identified - and more than a hundred injured, in addition to considerable material damage.
On August 12, the Cuban government declared the fire officially extinguished, and immediately afterward began the search for the missing, who were declared dead five days later.
In addition to the tanks, the physical-chemical analysis laboratory, all maintenance workshops, an electrical substation and a good part of the pipe lines and valves for fuel transfer were destroyed at the facility.
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