According to maritime documents, Venezuela’s state-run oil corporation PDVSA was loading a supertanker with petroleum and fuel for Cuba on Monday, an unusually significant volume to aid its political ally in overcoming an energy crisis marked by frequent blackouts, as reported by The Print.
Power outages
Many Cubans are worried about power shortages this summer because of several significant electricity disruptions this year when inhabitants will be turning on their air conditioners to beat the Caribbean heat.
Cuban officials attribute the sporadic power outages to problems processing heavy sour Cuban petroleum and gasoline shortages on the island, which is heavily dependent on supplies from Venezuela.
The main oil terminal in the nation, Matanzas, was partially destroyed by a major fire last year, which also made it difficult to discharge fuel imports.
Decreased oil exports
This week, the 400,000 barrels of fuel oil for power generation are being loaded into the Panama-flagged supertanker Nolan at the Jose terminal in Venezuela. According to internal PDVSA shipping documents, it will also load 1.13 million barrels of Venezuelan heavy oil, bringing the total shipment to 1.53 million barrels. This month’s ship is scheduled to set sail later.
Large tanker capacity in Cuba is extremely limited, especially in light of the Matanzas fire. One of the documents revealed that the Nolan was headed towards Matanzas, where Cuban state-owned businesses have been unloading imports by moving cargo to smaller ships via ship-to-ship operations.
According to independent data based on tanker movement, Venezuela’s oil exports to Cuba decreased by around 6% to 53,600 barrels per day (bpd) last year as a result of efforts to prevent its own fuel crisis.
Smuggling network
The U.S. Treasury Department blacklisted Nolan in November on suspicion that it was a member of a global oil smuggling network that facilitated oil trades for Hezbollah and Iran’s Quds Force. Nolan is owned by the Nigerian company Thomarose Global Investments Ltd.
Requests for comment from PDVSA, the Venezuelan oil ministry, and the Cuban Center for Foreign Press did not immediately receive a response. No one from Thomarose Global Ventures was available for comment.
Refinitiv Eikon vessel monitoring data show that the tanker has not sent a signal from its transponder since mid-December while in Venezuela.
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Source: The Print
