14ymedio, Havana, 3 April 2024 — The reconstruction of the fuel tanks at the Matanzas Supertanker Base is progressing at a slow pace. Four months after the deadline that the authorities set for the construction of the first tank, the images shared days ago by the Matanzas Fuel Marketer reveal that the structure of the tank is only half-built, and according to the official press, it is still undergoing “welding work.”
The delay has a high economic cost for the country. With no onshore storage, coastal tankers (smaller-scale ships that do not leave Cuban waters) must be used as substitutes to receive imported crude oil. This is what is happening now with the NS Concord, which arrived in Matanzas with 684,000 barrels of Russian oil.
An article published this Monday in Girón ignores some of the advances that have been made in the repair of the Base, destroyed in August 2022 by a serious fire that left 17 dead – several of them young people who were serving in fire brigade units – and 146 injured. “The welding work continues to mark the critical route in the construction of tank 88,” mainly in “the verticals, the assembly of the storage and the construction of the fire wall.”
“The welding work continues to mark the critical route in the construction of tank 88”
The newspaper also emphasizes that the staff works to recover in the shortest possible time “the vitality of the strategic enclave, and to convert the terminal and the entire industrial area into a sufficiently robust economic sector, less vulnerable and with a more modern image.” It also added that instead of the original four tanks, only two will be built, which will allow a greater safe distance between the tw
