The accident occurred around 6:40 p.m. this Monday, when the vehicle overturned in a dangerous area according to residents.
14ymedio, Madrid, October 21, 2025 — The accident of a tanker truck caused a spill of part of the 31,000 liters of crude oil that it was carrying, around 6:40 pm this Monday. The vehicle of the Transportación Crudo Occidente company overturned on the Vía Blanca on the way to Puerto Escondido (Mayabeque).
The driver was taken to the town of Santa Cruz, where he was treated for his injuries, which were not life-threatening, according to the Cuba-Petróleo Union (Cupet), which announced the news on its social networks around midnight.
The vehicle was on its way from the oil wells to the processing plant at Puerto Escondido. Specialized teams went to the site trying to recover as much of the fuel as possible, in addition to mitigating “the consequences caused by the spill.” So far it is unknown how much oil has been lost definitively and the causes of the accident, although among the comments to the post, attention has been drawn to the dangers of the road on which it occurred.
“Accidents are common in that area. I worked for the company and saw that we lost colleagues in the same way,” wrote a user, identified as Carlos Manuel Martínez Peña. Another comment mentions the “huge pothole there,” and although some point to the possibility that the driver was speeding, road conditions and worn truck tires are among the most cited causes by users, who celebrate that at least nobody died this time.
“Accidents are common in that area. I worked at the company and saw that we lost colleagues in the same way,” wrote a user, identified as Carlos Manuel Martínez Peña
The accident occurred on the same day that an elevated power deficit, exceeding 1,800 megawatts (MW) at peak hours, had been forecast. According to the daily report of the Electric Union of Cuba, most of the power outages are due to the shortage of crude oil, responsible for the lack of at least 651 MW in the average hour, compared with the 395 MW of the thermal power plants. The loss of power in that time frame was almost 1,000 MW. The data, finally, must have been worse than expected, since, according to a State update, unit 1 of the CTE Ernesto Guevara De La Serna, in Santa Cruz, left the system because of a problem with the speed control valve.
The oil lost yesterday was predictably destined for any of the thermoelectric power plants, since it belonged to Cupet, which uses the highly corrosive national crude in these plants.
The most recent oil spill, albeit for very different reasons, occurred in Matanzas last May. The tank contained 500 cubic meters of fuel stored ten years earlier in two tanks of the old José Martí thermoelectric facility, and it was never known how much was recovered.
Another major loss occurred in a railway accident in Sancti Spíritus last December, when two trains collided. One was coming from Ciego de Ávila with a load of crude oil that would have been processed in the small Sancti Spíritus refinery, Sergio Soto.
Translated by Regina Anavy
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