Venezuela state oil company denies cutting exports to Cuba

Venezuela state oil company denies cutting exports to Cuba
Published on July 15, 2016
By Caribbean News

HAVANA, Cuba -- Officials with Venezuela's state-run oil company,
Petróleos de Venezuela SA (PDVSA), have rejected allegations that the
firm has reduced crude oil exports to Cuba.

"There has not been any issue or reduction with the supply of Venezuelan
oil to Cuba. There is a technical and engineering difficulty at the
Cienfuegos refinery," said Luis Morillo, PDVSA's general manager in
Cuba, at a press conference on Tuesday.

"This is a technical problem all refineries are facing. We will close
certain areas of the plant for 120 days over the course of the year to
fix these issues and update certain processes," he added.

Cuba, long reliant on Venezuela as its top energy supplier under the
Petrocaribe alliance of nations that receive preferential terms for oil,
has received some 53,500 barrels per day (bpd) of crude from PDVSA this
year, a 40 percent decline from the first half of 2015, according to the
company's internal trade data, Reuters reported last week.

Venezuela has reportedly partially offset the smaller crude shipments to
Cuba by boosting exports of refined products such as fuel oil, diesel
and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG).

But overall shipments to Cuba, including both crude and refined
products, still declined 19.5 percent to 83,130 bpd in the first half of
this year, Reuters said.

As a result, some joint ventures and state-owned firms in Cuba were
recently ordered to reduce power usage.

Source: Venezuela state oil company denies cutting exports to Cuba |
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