Madrid/Maritime tracking services only detected in September a tanker with Cuban flag transporting Venezuelan crude. It was about Alicewhich departed from the port of Amuay, in Venezuela, on August 30 and arrived in Havana on September 9 with an approximate load of 300,000 barrels, according to estimates based on its draft.
According to this fact, says the expert of the University of Texas, Jorge Piñón, the load of 52,000 barrels per day (BPD) reported by the Reuters agency on Wednesday, “it had to be carried out aboard ghost tankers.” The specialist shared with 14ymedio Its analysis based on the data provided by tracking services, according to which there was no movement from Mexico, at least transparently.
The amount supplied last month by PDVSA is the highest so far from 2025, a year that has been very irregular in terms of shipments. They contrast the 50,000 BPD of March or 42,000 BPD of February with the 10,000 BPD of January and the Rankens April 8,000. The comings and goings of the US government with the Chevron license to extract in Venezuela have weighed a lot in these oscillations based on Caracas’ possibilities to sell or export greater quantities and even have no surplus in its inventories when the permission of the State Department has limited the operations.
As for the Russian tanker Akademik gubkin, that came to the island last September 25 With 740,000 barrels of Ural type crude oil, the transfer of its load began on October 2 to Lourdesa Cuban ship with capacity for 500,000 barrels. The operation takes place in the Bay of Nepa (Holguín), where another tanquero has also arrived, Equalitywith estimated capacity of 420,000 barrels, to participate in the transford of the Russian crude.
The Ministry of Energy and Mines reported the progress “at a good pace of the construction of the four new deposits in the Superanqueros de Matanzas base”
The load of Akademik Gubkin It is estimated at more than 48 million dollars, taking into account that the barrel of this type and origin is $ 65.49, although it is unknown how Cuba pays it, if it does. It is the second time that this Russian tanker enters the Cuban waters in 2025, after Arrival in February of a slightly higher amount of crude, 790,000 barrels valued at about 55 million dollars.
According to Piñón, Havana and Cienfuegos – or both – can be the destination refineries of this crude.
This Wednesday, the Ministry of Energy and Mines reported through its X account of the progress “at a good pace of the construction of the four new deposits in the Matanzas Super -Manager base”, which described as strategic for the country’s energy security.
Since the fire in 2022 who left 17 fatal victims – the majority young people who did active military service and were sent without sufficient knowledge to turn off the fire – the government has not only lost the ability to store the oil it receives, but is forced to perform laborious and expensive transfer tasks between boat and ship to manage loads. The loss of the Superanqueros base was, in fact, the impossibility of storing up to 200,000 cubic meters of fuel (about 1,258,000 barrels of oil).
The work implies the construction of 14 elements, not only the four main tanks, but also “roads, fences, interconnections and auxiliary systems, all with strengthened security levels.”
According to the official information, “the fuel marketing company is the main investor of this work, which also includes about two kilometers of perimeter fence and seven kilometers of asphalt in the access roads. The tanks, built with the greatest distance between them, will have modern racing systems and other security measures.”
