The Venezuelan state oil company, PDVSA, has started to use tankers that sail under the radar to supply their closest political ally, Cuba, as the fleet of state vessels that have historically covered the route dwindles, according to documents and ship monitoring services.
Cuba and its main oil supplier, Venezuela, had for more than a decade exclusively used their own ships to sail between the two countries.
But maintenance delays have left some ships out of service and the emergence of Mexico as a new supplier to Cubausing some of the same tankers, make available vessels insufficient to transport the oil and fuel the island desperately needs.
A large part of the fleets of vessels owned by Venezuela and Cuba are under US sanctions, which also limits their travel. Operated by third parties, dark fleet tankers often lack insurance in the West and They send false location signals to disguise their movements.
In June, PDVSA began shipping parcels of crude oil and fuel oil which partly delivers in Cuban waters and the remaining volumes continue their route from there to destinations in Asia, according to the company’s maritime documents.
Vessels alter their signal, making them appear to be elsewhere in the Caribbean while unloading in Cuba, often through ship-to-ship transfers, according to the monitoring service TankerTrackers.com and a satellite photo of Planet Labs view by Reuters.
One of the tankers, Neptune 6 with the flag of Panama, was last week near Nipe Bay, in Cuba, transferring heavy crude oil and Venezuelan fuel oil to the vessel Esperanza, with the flag of Cuba, according to the documents and the photograph, analyzed by TankerTrackers.com.
The ship’s transmitter is pointing to a location north of Curacao since the end of May, according to LSEG data.
The additional vessels could help boost Venezuelan oil supplies to Cuba, which so far this year stand at about 27,000 barrels per day (bpd), compared to 51,500 bpd in the same period in 2023.
The aid comes as demand for electricity produced by oil-fired plants soars during the hot Cuban summer.
The blackouts that were occasional in Cuba have become routine as there have been limits on imported supply and logistical problems that complicate the national distribution of fuel to its aging power plants.
Cuban energy officials have said workers are tuning up and maintaining electricity generating plants ahead of peak summer demand, and they expect fewer blackouts in the coming months.
Cuba has not been able to fully recover its oil storage capacity since a devastating fire destroyed a part of the largest oil terminal on the island, Matanzas. The lack of tanks forces some suppliers to transfer shipments to other ships used by Cuba for floating storage.
In May, the Mexican state oil company Pemex resumed crude oil shipments to Cuba after a three-month pause, in the same tankers used to ship oil from Venezuela, reported Reuters.
(With information from Reuters)
