Mexico is confirmed as Cuba’s second largest oil supplier, next only to VenezuelaThe tanker Wilma arrived in Matanzas on Monday carrying 390,000 barrels of medium Mexican crude oil.
According to information confirmed to DIARIO DE CUBA by Jorge Piñon, a researcher at the Energy Institute of the University of Texas and one of the best experts on the subject, The vessel arrived at the supertanker dock on Monday morning. As usual, the visit was not reported in the official press.
According to data shared by Piñón, Vilma is one of the tankers of GAESA, the Cuban military business groupand sailing under the island’s flag, departed from the Mexican oil terminal of Bajaritos on September 12.
It was the ship’s second voyage from Mexico to Cuba in a month. On August 6, it arrived in Cienfuegos from Bajaritos, according to the ship tracking site. Ship finder.
According to tanker monitoring conducted by Reuters in August, Last July Vilma made two voyages from the Mexican Bajaritos terminal to Cuba’s Cienfuegos and Havana refineries.respectively.
According to the Refinitiv Eikon site, the vessel previously carried Venezuelan crude oil and fuel to Cuba, but is now frequently used for transfers between Mexico and the island.
Vilma was at the Mexican port of Gotchacolcos on July 15 and Bajaritos on the 11th. Between 5 and 7 July he stayed at Matanzas.
The tanker Telsa from GAESA left for Venezuela in June, delivering Mexican crude oil from Bajaritos to Cienfuegos.It was loaded with oil at the Jose terminal and transferred to Santiago de Cuba on August 1.
Apart from the above, The ship Bicentenario, owned by Mexican state oil company Pemex, has made at least four trips from Mexico to Cuba this year.As per the mentioned data.
total, Mexico would have delivered about 13,000 barrels per day (bpd) of Olmega Light crude oil to Cuba between April and July to add about 2,000,000 barrels of oil. This type is better suited to older Cuban refineries than Venezuelan heavy oil.
According to Reuters, the Vilma and Telsa (named after Raúl Castro’s dead wife and General Téte Puebla, respectively) are among the few Cuban oil tankers not sanctioned by the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control. States (OFAC).
In recent years, Venezuela is having trouble producing enough fuel to meet its domestic needs, reducing what it can export. Likewise, their exports to Cuba through July this year have fallen to 55,000 bpd from nearly 80,000 shipped in 2020. In August they ended their exports of crude oil, fuel oil, petrol and diesel with an increase of 65,000 bpd.
Until this year, Mexico had only occasionally sent goods to Cuba for humanitarian reasons. This has led to the suspicion that Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s government may pay the island’s health workers sent to the country with fuel.
The fuel crisis that Cuba has been experiencing has intensified since last April, forcing Havana to seek new sources of supply, such as Brazil. For its part, Russia in June announced a deal to supply the island with oil company Rosneft 1.64 million tons of oil and derived products annually.
The first tanker carrying Russian fuel left the Black Sea port of Tuapse for Matanzas in the middle of that month.
Cuba has been receiving some regular fuel exports from Russia since last year. At the end of May, the supertanker Limo, flying the Cameroonian flag, arrived at the port of Madanzas with 800,000 barrels from the Eurasian country.
Despite this, In recent weeks, Cuban authorities have announced blackouts due to fuel shortages and production shortages. Set to respond to national electricity demand that their poor thermoelectric plants, which consume heavy oil extracted in Cuba, cannot supply, fuel oil-based engines and launch Turkish shirts.
