Amid the harsh sanctions imposed by the West on Russia after the invasion of Ukraine and the deep energy crisis that Cuba is experiencing, a Russian tanker loaded with fuel oil arrived on the island this Thursday.
As revealed by Reuters, the tanker Suvorovsky Prospect, flying the Liberian flag, it arrived at the port of Matanzas with some 700,000 barrels of fuel oil, loaded in the Russian port of Ust-Luga. The tanker brings supplies for Cuban power plants and gives Russia “an outlet for products rejected by the West,” explains the British agency in your note.
The cargo is worth about $70 million based on the product’s current market price and the ship is owned by a unit of Russia’s leading shipping conglomerate Sovcomflot, according to the Equasis maritime database.
Sovcomflot is under British, Canadian and US sanctions, and its fleet lost insurance backed by Western companies, as a result of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The Sovcomflot company is under British, Canadian and US sanctions, and its fleet lost its insurance backed by Western companies, as a result of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which now adds up to almost five months of war. Europe and the United Kingdom are advancing, Reuters recalls, towards an embargo on imports of Russian crude, scheduled for the end of this year.
The Russian tanker comes to alleviate a desperate situation on the Island, where fuel shortages are felt in the main cities. In Havana, the official press reports every day on the availability of products in the service centers of the capital.
Most of the oil arrives in Cuba from Venezuela, which, according to Reuters data, shipped 66,400 barrels per day to the Island in June.
In May, exports sank due to the changes introduced by the state-owned PDVSA, which required prepayment for cargo due to the non-payment of some buyers. In May, the quantities that arrived in Cuba, which does not pay the charges due to the agreements with Venezuela, were not made public, but in April they were 32,000 barrels per day.
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