An oil tanker with around 86 thousand barrels of fuel from Mexico arrived this Friday in the Bay of Havana, in a shipment intended to mitigate the prolonged blackouts that large areas of the island suffer from, the EFE agency reported this Saturday, citing data from the Energy Institute of the University of Texas.
The ship, identified as Ocean Mariner and flying the Liberian flag, departed in early January from the Pajaritos complex of the state-owned Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex), located in southern Mexico, and docked in the Cuban capital after several days of crossing.
This Saturday morning, unloading work began at the Ñico López refinery, in the Havana municipality of Regla, as confirmed by the agency.
The Ocean Mariner is one of the two ships that in recent weeks have left Mexican ports with similar cargoes, along with the Eugenia Gas, as part of a series of fuel shipments that Mexico has made to the island in recent years.
The arrival of this shipment occurs in a context of a prolonged energy crisis in Cuba, where large areas face power outages that can last more than 20 hours a day due to breakdowns in obsolete plants and a shortage of foreign currency to purchase fuel.
According to official data, Cuba needs about 110 thousand barrels per day to cover its basic energy needs, of which about 40 thousand are generated internally. Imported fuel represents around 60% of national consumption, and more than half goes to power the country’s thermoelectric plants.
Independent studies maintain that, in recent years, Mexico and Venezuela have been the main suppliers of hydrocarbons to Cuba, with Russia participating to a lesser extent. However, the volume of Venezuelan crude oil has recently decreased, which has accentuated dependence on other partners and generated uncertainties about future supply.
EFE/OnCuba
