Havana continues this Friday to experience disruptions in the manufactured gas service, due to the insufficient supply of natural gas received to meet the required pressures, reported the Manufactured Gas Company on its Facebook profile.
In an update published on September 18, the state entity modified the scenario announced the day before, when it had reported partial and total outages due to "unpostponable" maintenance work at the Energas plant in Puerto Escondido, located in the municipality of Santa Cruz del Norte, in the province of Mayabeque.
According to the new communication, the restoration of the service will depend on an improvement in the supply conditions. The company expects this to happen during the night on Friday and the early hours of Saturday, with a gradual recovery for the population.
The entity assured that it is maintaining constant monitoring of the situation and will continue to provide updates through its official channels if the issues persist.
The update does not specify the extent of the shortfall in natural gas supply or how many users are still affected by the interruption.
The day before, after the initial information on the matter, several citizens criticized that they had been without service for over 24 hours before any official communication was issued.
"Too late comes the information that could have been given to the public earlier, to prepare oneself. But no, one must be surprised by the lack of gas and figure out what to do for cooking. Terrible communication," wrote a resident in the comments on the company's post.
Another citizen was more direct: "Couldn't you have informed us about those urgent tasks yesterday or early today?"
The complaint is not only about the lack of notice but also about the simultaneous failures that leave households with no alternative for cooking. Manufactured gas is a cooking option that does not depend on electricity, making it a valuable resource during prolonged blackouts. However, when both services fail at the same time, the situation becomes unsustainable.
"Without power and without gas, you want to finish us off," summarized one neighbor. Another added, "Without light, the food spoils, and on top of that, we can't even boil anything. How many incompetent people are in charge of essential companies?"
A citizen went further in his analysis: "The companies that provide basic services seem to have a plan to kill the Cuban. No water, no gas, no electricity. They can coordinate to mess with us, but coordinating to ensure there's power when they cut off the gas, that's another story."
This interruption is not an isolated incident. In less than four months, the capital's network has experienced several significant breakdowns; in June due to maintenance of Plant No. 1; at the end of that same month due to an "unforeseen technical incident of force majeure"; in late July due to valve calibration, and in the following month due to a failure at the Canasí collection center.
The deterioration of the service coincides with the increase in rates approved through Resolution 156/2026 of the Ministry of Finance and Prices, which almost doubled the price of manufactured gas starting July 1: from 2.50 to 4.97 Cuban pesos per cubic meter. For a family of three to five members, this amounts to a monthly bill of 298.20 pesos for 60 cubic meters.
The capital network serves approximately 208,000 residential customers and around 3,844 non-residential ones across eight municipalities. At the time of this report, the affected residents were still waiting for official information regarding the timeline for service restoration.
Related videos:
Filed under: