A ship with diesel announced by the Government leaves Cuba after 50 days off Havana
HAVANA, Apr 16. Another enigma will be added to the opaque transfer of ships, cargo and purchases by the Cuban regime, after the tanker Eco Fleet, loaded with 40,000 tons of diesel,will head this weekend towards another destination in the Caribbean, after more than a month and a half of wandering in front of the Bay of Havana without touching port to unload.
In mid-March, when the most recent energy crisis on the Island reached its climax, giving rise to blackouts of up to more than 20 hours in some territories, and Cubans took to the streets to protest, the Minister of Energy and Mines , Vicente de la O Levy, promised the arrival of fuel shipments that would alleviate the situation.
From that date until today, three shipments of oil from Russia arrived at the Cuban port. However, it seems we will never know what happened to the Eco Fleet, the Marshall Islands-flagged petrochemical vessel that arrived near Cuba on February 25.
That ship, coming from Tunisia, remained almost static off the coast of Havana until this weekend, without receiving the order to enter port and dock to unload the 40,000 tons of diesel from it.
As of this Monday, the ship was already in Kingston, Jamaica, as Jorge Piñón, director of the Energy Program for Latin America and the Caribbean at the University of Texas, confirmed.
According to the Marine Vessel ship tracking platform, the ship was traveling towards the Caribbean island located in the south of Cuba, after leaving the area where it was waiting to enter the Havana roadstead for 50 days.
As reported by this media on February 13, the Eco Fleet departed from the La Skhira terminal, in Tunisia, on the 7th of that month, with a cargo of 40,000 tons of diesel.
Piñón then specified that, according to his calculations, the shipment has an approximate value of 26 million dollars, without considering the cost of freight.
In mid-March, De la O Levy assured that in the coming days, a ship would arrive in Cuba with 40,000 tons of diesel, of which 1,100 tons per day would be dedicated to electricity generation and another part to economic activity. Were you talking about the Eco Fleet? Why didn’t you specify your situation at that time?
Last week, the third shipment of oil from Russia arrived in Cuba in less than a month, which represents a new lifeline for the Island, which is experiencing a chronic crisis in its electrical energy system, accentuated by fuel shortages, after the end of shipments from Mexico and the decrease in the Venezuelan oil quota.
After a week of an increase in blackouts due to a generation deficit, especially due to the outage of the Antonio Guiteras Thermoelectric Plant, which underwent a new repair, since last Saturday the electricity supply has stabilized on the Island, according to the reports of the state Electrical Union (UNE).
However, this relief could be temporary. As the technical director of the UNE, Lázaro Guerra, recognized at the beginning of the month, the arrival of oil from Russia will provide a respite, but “the energy crisis is not over.”
