Cubans queue up in for days to get diesel fuel

In Cuba, fuel queues fill up for blocks, and irate drivers wait several days or even longer to fill up their cars.

According to experts, the dramatic shortage of diesel fuel is the result of a "domino effect", as authorities were forced to divert fuel from the transport sector to run power plants.

Dany Pérez has spent four days in a queue of cars waiting to refuel his truck with diesel to travel the 900 kilometres (559 miles) that separate him from his home in the province of Santiago de Cuba.

He drives his truck, a green 1950s Chevrolet - adapted to carry about 40 passengers - between eastern Santiago and Havana for a living.

Throughout the four days, he has been in line, Perez has had to eat and sleep in his vehicle.

In the early hours of Thursday, at least 200 cars, trucks and vans were queuing at the service station in the Guanabacoa neighborhood.

The drivers organized themselves by drawing up lists and updating their presence on them each day as the fuel tankers arrived and the line progressed.

Those who live in Havana can monitor their progress on the line from home through WhatsApp groups put together by their own colleagues.

"I've been waiting for 15 days to refuel (diesel) my truck, and I can't refuel because all the queues at gas stations have a list, and on each list, people have 4 or 5 cars signed up, and you have to wait," said Juan López, a 54, state truck driver exhausted of waiting.

The government has made no official comments on the shortage of diesel in the stations.

Jorge Piñon, director of the Energy and Environment Program for Latin America and the Caribbean at the University of Texas, explained what caused the shortage.

"The collapse of the thermoelectric plants has caused an increase in the demand of diesel power generators. Venezuela has not been sending Cuba the amount of diesel that Cuba needs. Therefore, Cuba has had to take part of the supply dedicated to the transportation sector to supply the diesel power generators," Piñon said.

Cuba has 13 thermoelectric plants, of which eight have been in service for more than 30 years, and five are modern floating plants rented from Turkey since 2019 to prevent the situation from worsening.

When these enormous thermoelectric plants -which generate half of the energy the country needs are supplied with low-quality heavy crude oil extracted from the island itself- fail –as it usually happens, the directors of the sector must go to diesel generator sets distributed throughout the country to compensate for the lack and avoid blackouts.

Half of the diesel required in Cuba was obtained from Venezuela, with whom it has a special agreement, and which is also going through a difficult situation.

According to the experts, and as President Díaz-Canel also acknowledged, the problem is far from being resolved since it requires a radical recapitalization and modernization of the vulnerable thermoelectric plants, something unthinkable in the current context of crisis.

In recent weeks, Cubans have also been experiencing major blackouts, which generated so much tension in the population.

Last year these power outages were one of the causes of popular revolt of July 11 when thousands went out to protest in Havana and other cities.