14ymedio, Havana, 22 May 2023 — Night arrived this Sunday without many Havanans having a gas supply twelve hours after the breakdown announced by the Cuba-Petróleo Union (Cupet). The company issued a statement of a few lines reporting a failure at 12:10 in the switch of the compressor system of the Puerto Escondido plant, in Mayabeque, which supplies the gas to Havana. The plant belongs to Energas, a joint venture managed by the Canadian company Sherritt and the Cuban state company Cupet.
“Only 40% of power will be received in the plants that produce manufactured gas, so if not solved in the early hours of the morning there could be a partial or total shutdown in the service to customers,” the note added.
The breakdown also affected the generation of electricity at the Boca de Jaruco Power Plant, causing a deficit of 200 MW, to which was added another breakdown in block 6 of the Máximo Gómez Báez de Mariel Thermoelectric Plant, which stopped providing 95 MW, so more blackouts were expected during peak hours.
Those affected soon complained through social networks after not being able to cook all day.
“It’s morning and NOTHING works,” a Cubadebate reader wrote on Facebook. “We have endured the repetition, to the point of exhaustion, of effort on top of effort, the visits of such and such a well-dressed official and his meetings with the Temporary Working Group and its analyses and strategies. And again more efforts and ’creative resistance’.”
Most of the reactions accounted for the exhaustion of the population, tired of not having fuel, electricity and, now, not even gas. “Sell the country or we’re going to die,” wrote another user.
Part of the gas treated in the Boca de Jaruco and Puerto Escondido plants is sent to Havana for about 280,000 families, according to Edel Andrés Alfaro Pérez, the recent economic manager of Energas.
At the beginning of this year, a rupture of the duct caused a leak and left part of the Cuban capital without service. The neighbors of Puerto Escondido complained to 14ymedio this March about their situation because of Energas. The leaks are constant and the pollution is visible even in the vegetation. The town is not the same.
“Until a few years ago one said the name of this town and what came to mind was natural beauty, sea and fun, but Cupet has taken part of that from us. The oil stench in the air is constant,” said Dayamí, a resident, using a fictitious name.
Translated by Regina Anavy
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