MIAMI, United States.- A tanker carrying 300,000 barrels of diesel fuel from a Russian port was diverted to Cuba this Friday after trying to reach a Colombian port, the Reuters news agency reported.
According to the note, which cites ship monitoring data, amid growing restrictions by Western countries on shipments of Russian origin, the communist island increased imports from Venezuela, Russia and other countries this year, with the aim of cover a fuel deficit that has caused energy rationing and long lines of drivers in front of the stations.
Added to this need was the devastating fire that last August consumed a large part of the Matanzas Supertanker Base, the main oil terminal in the country.
The oil tanker had marked Cartagena as its intended destination after passing the Panama Canal, but later changed its route and revised its destination to the Cuban terminal in Matanzas.
Flying the Liberian flag, the Transsib Bridge loaded at the Russian port of Nakhodka, in the far east of the country, and entered the Cartagena anchorage zone early on Friday, but did not unload there, according to Refinitiv Eikon data. the note says.
According to Reuters, the Colombian Ministry of Mines and Energy said Thursday that there were no restrictions on the origin of shipments going to the country. “The restriction would be in terms of the quality that it must meet and that it be imported by an agent of the chain,” said a ministry spokesman. “But there is no restriction to the origin.”
However, the report adds, the state-owned company Ecopetrol, Colombia’s largest fuel importer, assured that the company was not the buyer of the diesel since it had a ban on oil shipments of Russian origin.
The vessel has been managed since April by Sun Ship Management, formerly called SCF Management Services, a unit of Russia’s Sovcomflot, according to the parent company’s website.
Sovcomflot is subject to US, British and Canadian sanctions and has lost insurance from Western companies for its fleet.
Diesel consumption has recently increased in Latin America, returning to pre-pandemic levels and increasing the need for imports as a result of the expansion of freight and passenger transport. Some countries, such as Brazil and Cuba, continue to import Russian oil and fuel after the war.
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