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NorthAmOil COMMENTARY NorthAmOil
Fire could plunge Cuba into an energy crisis
Following a blaze that has destroyed at least 40% of the Matanzas Supertanker Base, Cuba stands to run low on power plant fuel. The consequences could lead the US to reconsider sanctions policy.
CUBA
WHAT:
Cuba’s Matanzas Supertanker Base caught fire and burned for five days following a lightning strike on August 5.
WHY:
The complex, which includes an import terminal and storage depot, handles about 40% of the island state’s crude oil and fuel imports.
WHAT NEXT:
Damage to the facility
is likely to exacerbate Cuba’s economic woes andenergyshortages, sparking a humanitarian crisis that could even lead to a rethinking of US sanctions policy.
CUBA may be heading for an energy crisis fol- lowing a devastating fire that has destroyed at least 40% of the Matanzas Supertanker Base, which serves as the country’s largest crude oil and petroleum product import terminal and storage depot.
The blaze broke out on the evening of August 5, when a bolt of lightning hit a section of the complex that houses four storage tanks. Accord- ing to press reports, the lightning strike set one of the four tanks on fire on Friday night, and the flames spread to a second tank on Saturday and a third tank on Monday. Cuba’s government responded by sending hundreds of firefighters to the site, while the governments of Mexico and Venezuela provided assistance in the form of special equipment and emergency personnel.
Mario Sabines, the governor of Cuba’s west- ern Matanzas province, indicated on August 8 that firefighters had been having great difficulty preventing the fire from spreading to other parts of the tank farm. “The risk we had announced happened, and the blaze of the second tank com- promisedthethirdone,”hewasquotedassaying by the Associated Press.
CNN, meanwhile, quoted him separately as saying that the fire had spread from tank to tank like flames from an “Olympic torch,” turning the entire area into a “cauldron.”
The fire raged for nearly five days and was finally reported to be out on the afternoon of August 9. In remarks broadcast on state tele- vision on that day, Rolando Vecino, the Cuban Interior Ministry’s head of transport, said there were signs that the severity of the blaze had diminished. First responders have “managed to control the fire,” he declared.
Ed Augustin, a correspondent for Al Jazeera, agreed, noting in a news broadcast from the port of Matanzas on August 9 that the colour of the flames had changed from black to light grey. “The blaze finally seems to be under control,” he said.
“You can see a huge amount of smoke bil- lowing out but crucially, the colour has changed. For the last three days, the colour has been a deep soot black,” he said. “Now it’s a light shade of grey, evidence that much of the fire has been smothered.”
Casualties and damage
As of press time, the full details of the story were still emerging.
One firefighter was reported dead, with another 14 missing and five more injured and in a critical condition. Among the civilian pop- ulation, more than 100 people were said to be injured, with 22 of them hospitalised.
Cuban authorities have claimed that the fire did not cause any crude oil or petroleum prod- ucts to be leaked into Matanzas Bay, even though the spread of the blaze from the first tank to the second set off a number of explosions and led to the spillage of the second tank’s contents. However, the burning fuel led the government to evacuate nearly 5,000 people from the nearby Dubrocq neighbourhood and to warn residents of areas surrounding the port to wear face masks or stay indoors so as not to breathe in fumes that might contain poisonous substances. The warn- ings extended to sites as far away as Havana, which is about 100 km east of Matanzas
Officials in Havana have also not commented ontheexactamountoffuellostintheblaze.Each of the four tanks at that section of the Matan- zas complex was built with a capacity of 50,000 cubic metres, or 50mn litres. The first tank was reported by AP to have been about half full before the incident, while Bloomberg said that the first tank had contained about 26,000 cubic metres of crude oil and the second 50,000 cubic metres of residual fuel oil (RFO).
Knock-on effects
The fire is also having knock-on effects in other sectors of the Cuban economy.
As noted above, the Matanzas complex is Cuba’s largest oil and petroleum product import terminal, and as such it handles much of the fuel that comes into the country to serve as feedstock for electricity generation. Some of that fuel must now be turned away or diverted; as Tanker- Trackers.com reported on August 8, the Vilma, a Cuban tanker carrying around 340,000 barrels of Venezuelan crude, had to change destinations and dock in Antilla, a port in eastern Cuba, rather than Matanzas because of the fire.
Meanwhile, noted Jorge Pinon, an expert in Cuban energy policy at the University of Texas at
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