Up to twelve days in a row to fill up: the energy crisis in Cuba punishes taxi drivers and truck drivers

The driver Dany Pérez spent four days in a queue of cars waiting to load his diesel truck to travel the 900 kilometers that separate it from his home in the province of Santiago de Cuba. Jhojan Rodríguez, owner of a taxi is better off. … or worse, depending on how you see it: with a little luck he’ll be able to fill up in the next few hours, but he’s been in line for more than a week.

Hundreds of vehicle owners have spent entire days this season waiting to stock up in the middle of a deep scarcitywhich according to experts is the result of a sort of “domino effect”, as the authorities have been forced to hijack this fuel from the transport sector to start generating sets, in an attempt to cope with the deep energy crisis.

It’s not the first time Cubans have experienced fuel shortages, but it is one of the most dramatic for its duration.

Eat and sleep in the truck

“I’ve seen some bad situations, but not like now,” Dany Pérez, 46, told the AP agency, which makes the journey between eastern Santiago and Havana.

During the four days he stood in line, Pérez had to eat and sleep in his vehicle.

In the early hours of Thursday there were at least 200 cars, trucks and vans queuing at the gas station in the Guanabacoa neighborhood – including Pérez – and another similar number in the Playa neighborhood, journalists from Associated Press.

The drivers organized themselves by making lists and updating their presence every day as the tankers arrived and the line proceeded slowly.

Unlike Pérez, those who live in Havana run more fortunate because they can go home from time to time, keeping their place online through the WhatsApp groups put together by their colleagues.

“I am a professional taxi driver … I pay taxes, social security. I am legally established,” Jhojan Rodríguez, 37, owner of a classic gold and white 1954 Oldsmobile, explained to the AP. family depend on this diesel that I will put here, “he said.

Rodriguez wore 12 days in a row at the service station in the municipality of Playa – several kilometers from the Guanabaco station – and he arrived so “dry” that he had to push his vehicle in the last stretches.

Borders

For prevent hoarding They can only refuel what is contained in their own tank, which in their case is about 60 liters and with which, he assured, they will only be able to work for about three days.

Although users of specialty or regular gasoline have had a hard time and agglomerations have occurred, the problem has focused in recent weeks on those who charge diesel, which in Cuba is called dry oil.

There is no estimate of how many will be affected, but in general gasoline is fine for modern or Soviet-era cars; while they use trucks, urban transport, old vintage cars that flood the cities diesel engines. And this is a visibly larger universe.

“Nobody said ‘this’ happens with fuel,” Rodríguez complained. “If any information came out ‘look there is no oil because the situation in the country needs it to give electricity to the people’, I understand”.

official silence

Although there have been no official comments on the diesel shortage at the stations, experts believe the shortage is, as suggested by Rodríguez, and is popular voice on the streets – directly related to the country’s electricity crisis, which is often pronounced in the scorching heat of summer.

The island periodically undergoes major blackouts, which last year were one of the triggers of the unusual popular uprisings.

“What we are seeing is what we call the domino effect,” Jorge Piñon, director of the Energy and Environment Program for Latin America and the Caribbean at the University of Texas, told the PA.

“The collapse of the thermoelectric (plants) caused an increase demand for diesel generator sets. Venezuela did not send the amount of diesel it needs to Cuba, so Cuba had to take part of the supply dedicated to the transport sector for diesel generator sets, “said Piñon.

“That is why we see the problems that Cubans have today in the streets of not finding enough ‘oil’,” added the expert.

generators

Cuba has 13 thermoelectric power plants, of which eight have more than 30 years of service and five are modern floating lifts chartered from Turkey since 2019 to prevent the situation from getting worse.

When these huge thermoelectric plants – which generate half the energy the country needs and are supplied with low-quality heavy crude oil extracted from the island itself – fail – and it often happens -, sector managers must go to diesel generator sets distributed throughout the national territory to make up for the shortage and avoid blackouts.

Until the arrival of the Covid-19 pandemic, Cuba required about 137,000 barrels of fuel per day – naphtha, diesel, gas and derivatives – to propel its economy.

He received half of it from Venezuela, with whom he has a special convention and that he is also going through a difficult situation.

Cubans have also been living in recent weeks major blackoutswhich generated so much tension in the population that President Miguel Díaz-Canel had to go out to explain the situation on television and started a tour of the main thermoelectric plants.

This week the overseas press reported on the arrival of a Russian super tanker loaded with 700,000 barrels of fuel oil through the port of Matanzas, in the center of the country. Authorities have not confirmed his presence.

“We think it is an expedition from Russia instead of Venezuela. That it is a triangulation in which Russia is replacing Venezuela in this expedition, which will later be paid for by Venezuela and not Cuba,” commented Piñón, indicating that this fuel obviously it will power the thermoelectric plants.

Plan B

According to experts, and as Díaz-Canel also acknowledged, the problem is far from solved because it requires a radical recapitalization and modernization of vulnerable thermoelectric plants, which is unthinkable in the current context of crisis and especially under the sanctions imposed by the United States on the island, which in their suffocation policy have also persecuted oil shipments to the island . to the Caribbean nation that has affected the population so much.

Away from macroeconomics, users try to cope with shortcomings in the best possible way.

“My plan B is to sell the car and leave the country with my family. I don’t know what I’ll do,” said Rodríguez, a worried taxi driver standing in line in the Playa neighborhood.

“I’ll keep fighting because I can’t stop working. But if it’s not there (diesel) we’ll have to park ourselves (park the truck),” concluded Pérez, instead of queuing for Guanabacoa.

Source: AP

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