Madrid/The commission of a minor crime has cost two workers from the Matanzas Fuel marketing company public humiliation that includes the dissemination of their faces and full names as if they were two dangerous criminals. That, as a starter, because the greater penalty is to come if in the trial that awaits them they are accused of sabotage, one of the most serious crimes in the penal code, with sentences of between four and ten years in prison.
The news was released this Monday by the official account Con todos la victoria, dedicated to airing small police successes in the province of Matanzas and in which the fact has been described as a “totally embarrassing act.” In it post – accompanied by photographs of the alleged thieves – it is reported that the authorities surprised the shift leader and a security agent of the company “with their hands in the gasoline.”
The workers had stolen from one of the tanks “25 liters of gasoline carefully packed in plastic bags.” nylona product that is highly in demand and in deficit these days in the population”, when “their mission was precisely to protect those resources destined for the economy and the well-being of the population.” For this reason, they indicate, “they won a judicial process.”
A truck driver from the Transcupet company was luckier than them, who was caught “milking” fuel on the national highway, near Jagüey Grande.
A truck driver from the Transcupet company was luckier than them, who was caught “milking” fuel on the national highway, near Jagüey Grande. In your case, although also The name and surname have been released, there is no photo with his face. And it was extracting 100 liters of oil from the tank. The account instructs once again. “The move, which seemed clever, ended in a setback: (…) A lesson that makes it clear that, no matter how many tricks are invented, what is foreign remains foreign.”
It cannot be denied, in light of the comments in both publications, that there is a lack of voices calling for a tough hand against those who “steal from everyone”, but the closed defense of the three individuals is the general trend. “In Cuba people live off of theft in all companies, because the salary is not worthy of any human being,” one indicated. Mentions of unworthy salaries are repeated ad nauseam and there is no shortage of those who consider that corruption is inherent to Cuban daily life. “In Cuba everything is illegal, from the moment you get out of bed you are thinking about how to survive.”
Fuel theft has been plaguing the island for many years and the authorities do not know how to put a stop to it: neither exemplary trials nor convictions, increasingly higherhave managed to reduce the number of thefts of this type. A few months ago, in a program by Humberto López on Cuban Television dedicated to this crime, it was stated that in the country there were perfectly well-oiled systems – involving operators, brigade leaders, managers and custodians – with which they were lost. “up to 20,000 or 30,000 liters of fuel” per day.
Under current conditions, when the Electrical Union daily reports a deficit of about 1,000 megawatts only due to the lack of distributed generation – most of them due to fuel shortages – pointing out who takes 25 liters cannot hide the revelation that the Cuban Government itself diverts millions of barrels of oil gifted by Venezuela to the Chinese market, instead of dedicating them to the production of electricity to reduce blackouts of up to 24 hours in a row.
This Monday the Island once again experienced a scandalous generation deficit, with 2,007 MW at peak hour. Although during the best solar hour the photovoltaic parks delivered 523 MW, the morning generation was only 1,330, for a demand of 2,300 MW. Things, logically, got worse in the evening, when only 1,257 MW were produced for a demand of 3,089. Of them, more than 930 were due to lack of fuel.
The situation could be complicated by the direction things are taking at the state oil company PDVSA. To the data known this Monday about demands for discounts by buyers – who see how their purchases could be seized by the United States after what happened with the seizure of the Skippernew information is added. According to Reutersan oil tanker with Russian gasoline – it is used to refine heavy Venezuelan crude oil – and four large tankers have turned around since that ship was confiscated.
The first of them is the ‘Boltaris’, with the flag of Benin, which was transporting some 300,000 barrels of Russian gasoline to Venezuela, and turned back over the weekend
The first of them is the Boltarisunder the flag of Benin, which was transporting some 300,000 barrels of Russian gasoline to Venezuela, and turned back over the weekend. Now, the agency says, it is heading to Europe without having unloaded. The other four ships, scheduled to load at Venezuelan ports in the coming weeks, have also turned back, leaving many of the country’s exports paralyzed, except for the one carried by Chevron, the American company with permits to operate in Venezuela.
This Monday, PDVSA claimed to have been the victim of a cyber attack that stopped its administrative and operational systems, including the delivery of oil.
The sanctions imposed on hydrocarbons during Donald Trump’s first term caused a 99% drop in foreign exchange earnings between 2014 and 2020 and the economy stopped generating $642 billion.
In January of this year, crude oil production exceeded one million barrels per day (bpd) for the first time since June 2019, pumping 1,031,000 bpd. The amount has increased to 1,142,000 bpd in November, although in 1998, a year before Chavismo came to power, Venezuela produced 3.1 million bpd, according to a report by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). Two years later, Chávez and Castro signed the agreement with which Cuba maintained a stable supply that gave it air for decades, despite the fact that production was declining, especially since 2017, but now things are going even more wrong.
