14ymedio, Havana, 29 December 2020 — On Tuesday the Alicia, an oil tanker with a Cuban flag but owned by a Russian company, is heading to the Venezuelan refinery in Amuay on its usual route to bring fuel to the island. It is not the only cargo ship that will bring supplies from the partner country of the Cuban regime. The Sandino, which left Cienfuegos on the 22nd, is heading to the same port.
The operation is one more among the usual crude transfers between the allied countries as denounced this Monday by Julio Borges, commissioner for Foreign Relations of the Government of Juan Guaidó, recognized by more than 50 countries. The politician assured that Venezuela’s Chavismo regime delivers up to 10% of the country’s daily oil production to the Cuban regime.
“Despite the PDVSA (state oil company) crisis, Nicolás Maduro delivers up to 10% of our daily oil production to Cuba,” Guaidó wrote on Twitter.
Borges, who is exiled in Colombia, cried out against Maduro for what he considers “one more example of his submission to Castroism” and expressed his annoyance in another message on the social network.
“Outrageous! Yesterday the tanker Alicia arrived in Amuay, a ship operated by a Russian company that transports crude oil to Havana. It is the second trip of that ship this month,” he said, without knowing that, probably at same time, the Sandino is also on its way to his country to load oil destined for Cuba.
The information was provided on Monday night by the oil expert Armand Delon, who gave the position of the ship and stated that on December 18 the Sandino left Puerto de La Cruz with 390,000 barrels of crude “for the sanctioned military mafias Cubametales/Cupet.”
For Delon, who also asked his followers not to confuse Cubans who support the regime with the “majority” that is against the two dictatorships, this continuous coming and going of ships reflects that both governments are mocking US sanctions that prevent them from trading.
According to the Venezuelan press, gasoline consumption has increased in Venezuela in the last month by 20,000 barrels per day and PDVSA’s production amounts to between 70,000 and 80,000. In the previous months, when Venezuelans were in quarantine, consumption was about 130,000 barrels a day; in December, with a certain normalization of life, 150,000 are being consumed, according to the figures of the Oil Chamber of Venezuela.
“The world and Venezuelans must join forces to stop this looting,” said Borges, alarmed by the possibility that shortages continue to increase in Venezuela as crude oil is given away to Cuba.
In September, seven ships left the Caribbean country bound for Cuba. At the beginning of October another two joined, Ícaro and Sandino, the latter, in particular, has loaded in Venezuelan refineries to return to the island every month since July.
Both the Alicia and the Sandino are owned by Caroil Transport Marine LTD, a company registered in Cyprus and under the control of the brother of Brigadier General Luis Alberto Rodríguez López-Callejas, member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba, head of the V Department of the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR) and director of Gaesa, the economic emporium of the island’s military. He is particularly affected by individual sanctions, but also by Caroil Transport Marine LTD itself, which, nevertheless, has spent the whole year bringing crude from Venezuela, including some supplied by Iran, a country also affected by being on the United States Foreign Assets Control (Ofac) list.
The tanker Alicia, formerly known as the Kriti Amber, was renamed in honor of Cuba’s late prima ballerina Alicia Alonso. Previously, the ship also received the names Oriental Emerald and Ocean Globe. It was built at the SLS Heavy Industries shipyard, (Busan, South Korea), has been operating since 2005, and is currently owned by the Russian company Sovcomflot.
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