Diesel is missing for Cuban drivers as fuel for electricity, #Diesel #missing #Cuba #drivers #fuel #electricity Welcome to OLASMEDIA TV NEWSThis is what we have for you today:
HAVANA (AP) — Dany Pérez had spent four days in a row of vehicles waiting to fill his truck with the diesel he needs for the 900-kilometer journey from Havana to his home in eastern Cuba.
Taxi driver Jhojan Rodríguez had waited longer at another station – it had been almost two weeks – but he was finally near the head of the line of hundreds of vehicles in the Playa district of the capital.
Such lines are becoming more common in Cuba, where officials apparently send scarce diesel to power plants rather than to vehicle gas stations.
It is not the first time the island has suffered from fuel shortages, but it is one of the worst.
“I’ve seen some pretty bad situations, but not like now,” said 46-year-old Pérez, who was eating and sleeping in his 1950s Chevrolet truck, which he had equipped to carry about 40 passengers. .
Drivers in the queues have tried to organize themselves by creating waiting lists and updating them daily as they wait for fuel trucks. Because of the lists, those who live nearby can go home for spells – keep track of progress through a WhatsApp group.
“I am a professional taxi driver. … I pay taxes, social security. I’m legally established,” said Rodríguez, the 37-year-old owner of a 1954 gold-and-white Oldsmobile whose worn-out petrol engine had at one point been replaced with a diesel. “My house, my family depends on this diesel.”
The car ran out of fuel and Rodríguez had to push it in line. That was 12 days earlier. Authorities say drivers can only fill their tanks, but not other containers. For Rodríguez, that’s 60 liters (16 gallons), which he said could last him three days.
The recent fuel shortage largely affects diesel – used by heavy duty vehicles and classic cars whose original engines have been swapped long ago, often with Eastern European truck engines – rather than the petrol used by most cars.
Rodriguez expressed his frustration at the lack of clear explanations from officials.
“Nobody has said ‘this is what happens’ with the fuel,” said Rodríguez. “If at some point there was information that ‘Look, there’s no fuel because the situation of the country requires people to get electricity,’ I would understand.”
Experts agree with scuttlebutt in the streets, saying the country cannot afford to buy all the diesel it needs and that what it has is focused on generating power.
“What we’re seeing is what we call the domino effect,” said Jorge Piñon, director of the Latin America and Caribbean Energy Program at the University of Texas at Austin.
“The collapse of the thermoelectric plants has led to an increased demand for diesel generating units. Venezuela has not sent Cuba the amount of diesel it needs, so Cuba has had to take part of the supply destined for the transport sector for the diesel-electric generation groups,” he said.
Half of Cuba’s electricity comes from 13 thermoelectric plants, eight of which are more than 30 years old. They mostly depend on the island’s own heavy crude, but their operation has been erratic. So the island is turning to diesel units to cover the shortfall.
Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, Cuba used about 137,000 barrels per day of fuel — gasoline, diesel, natural gas and derivatives — to keep the economy moving. About half of that came from political ally Venezuela, which has itself sunk into an economic crisis and has found it increasingly difficult to produce and ship fuel under mismanagement and US embargoes.
A series of recent power outages caused public grumbles and prompted Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel to explain the situation on national television and visit thermoelectric plants.
International news media and tanker tracking sites reported that a Russian tanker carrying 700,000 barrels of oil has reached Cuba in recent days, although authorities did not comment.
“We think it’s a shipment from Russia instead of Venezuela — that it’s a triangulation where Russia replaces Venezuela with this shipment, to be paid later by Venezuela and not Cuba,” Piñon said.
Meanwhile, Cubans are adapting as they can – whether at home or abroad.
“I keep struggling because I can’t stop working,” Pérez said at the station in Guanabacoa, east of central Havana. “but if there’s no (fuel), we’ll have to park it.”
At the station in Playa, taxi driver Rodríguez said he was thinking of other options.
“My plan B is to sell the car and move out of the country with my family. I don’t know what I’m going to do.”