Four tanker ships, flying Cuban and Panamanian flags, have left for Cuba carryings a combined cargo of around 800,000 barrels of gasoline, light crude oil, fuel oil, and other fuels and refinery products, from Falcon state, Western Venezuela port, even though gasoline is being rationed in Venezuela.
Meanwhile, all over Venezuela, gasoline is only supplied to police, military and Maduro regime officers, a measure due to the Coronavirus lockdown but is evidence of the lack of gasoline in the oil country.
Experts denounced that, besides leaving Venezuela without gasoline, the shipment included more than 300,000 barrels of the much desired Mesa crude, the more profitable and easier to refine.
The tankers started arriving Saturday 28th at the Amuay Refinery dock in the Paraguana Refining Complex, where they loaded the gasoline, crude, fuel oil, diesel and lubricants to be taken to Santiago de Cuba.
The last ship left on March 30th. National Assembly lawmaker in exile Julio Borges reported that the shipments’ final destination is a Cuban refinery in Cienfuegos.
Former PDVSA worker Juan Fernandez, a critic of the Chavez and Maduro regimes, said the combined cargo was round 800,000 b/d.
The cargo is equivalent to more than a day of total Venezuelan production of 600,000 barrels a day of crude oil. Venezuela is only refining around 150,000 barrels of crude a day, despite having installed capacity of over 1.3 million barrels.
PDVSA dismantled
Falcon state opposition lawmaker Luis Stefanelli said the shipments to Cuba take place every two weeks. He added that PDVSA agreed to dismantle the CRP and use the pieces, equipment, and workers from the refinery complex to try to up El Palito Refinery in Carabobo state.
“Nowadays, PDVSA is a corpse unburied, on it, they acted with determination to destroy it. That’s why there is no gasoline because they destroyed all sources of supply,” Stefanelli said about the management of oil company by the chavism regime.
Venezuelan production declined dramatically under Chavez and Maduro government, from 3.5 million barrels a day in early 1999 to around 600,000 b/d today, oil expert, Antero Alvarado said.
Since 2000, Cuba and Venezuela have signed a cooperation agreement in which one of the articles states that “the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela undertakes to provide the Republic of Cuba, (…) with goods and services, including technical assistance and advice from public and private entities, as well as the supply of crude oil and oil derivatives, for a total of fifty-three thousand (53,000) barrels per day”.
