[ad_1]
The announcement stated Russia studies building oil refinery in Cuba This raises a variety of expectations and doubts, given that the rapprochement between Moscow and Havana has generated more rhetoric than concrete facts.
Last Monday, July 22, the official TASS news agency said that the comments were made by Alexander Babakov, deputy chairman of the Russian State Duma, who arrived on the island as part of a large delegation led by the chairman of the legislative body, Viacheslav Volodin. “Cuba has crude oil: it is logical not to import petroleum products but to produce them here.”
He added: “The largest Russian companies could participate.” Babakov said the issue was at the negotiation stage.
but, Does the seemingly huge investment in refining Cuban crude make sense when the island’s four refineries have accumulated a variety of technical, operational and obsolescence problems? Is the solution that Venezuela under Hugo Chávez has injected $1 million into renovating the Cienfuegos refinery, which uses Soviet technology and refined Russian oil until 1990?
Jorge Pinion“If the major Russian oil refining companies (Rosneft, 32%; Lukoil, 10%; Gazprom, 5%) are serious about looking at new refineries or upgrading to high-conversion technology in Cienfuegos, they must take Lessons from PEMEX”.
Pinion recalled that in 2018, Andrés Manuel López Obrador announced the construction of a new high-conversion refinery in Dos Bocas, Tabasco. Its production capacity is 340,000 barrels per day and it is said to be “The cornerstone of Pemex’s plan to reduce Mexico’s reliance on U.S. refined fuel imports”Experts say.
Construction began the following year, with an estimated value of $8 billion. “However, six years after it began, the project is not operating at full capacity, with Pemex recently reporting that costs have risen to $18.9 billion. Despite being ‘inaugurated’ on July 1, 2022, the first commercial barrels of gasoline and diesel have yet to be produced,” he said.
Pinion added that more than 2 million barrels per day of refining capacity in the Caribbean is currently idle or has stopped processing activities, in addition to refining capacity in plants in Aruba, Curacao, the Bahamas, Puerto Rico, Trinidad and Tobago or Venezuela.
“These refineries are not profitable due to high distillation costs and lack of high conversion technology.which enables heavy crude oil to be processed into high-value clean fuels,” he noted.
Pinion himself recently commented to DIARIO DE CUBA that refining with crude oil that has a high sulfur content, such as that extracted from Cuban wells, presents particular difficulties. That is why, for example, Havana typically imports the fuel oil and diesel burned in the island’s energy production plants, while the United States has facilities with the most advanced technology.
“The refinery complexity index in Latin America and the Caribbean, or the ability to process heavier crudes with higher sulfur content into higher-value, cleaner fuels, is about 46 percent, compared to 75 percent in the U.S.,” he said.
“High-conversion refineries equipped with desulfurization, catalytic cracking and/or hydrocracking process units and coking units can convert heavy gas oils and residual oils with high sulfur content into higher-value, cleaner products such as gasoline, jet fuel and diesel,” he warned.
According to Pinion, 36% of Latin America and the Caribbean’s total refined product demand (equivalent to 7 million barrels per day) is met by US imports. In 2022, 46% of the country’s total refined petroleum exports (5.6 million barrels per day) will be shipped to Latin America and the Caribbean.
“Today, the United States is the main supplier/exporter filling the gap in clean fuel demand in Latin America and the Caribbean, not the defunct PetroCaribe, let alone the new refineries on Cuban soil,” he stressed.
Pinon said the announced Russian refinery could be added to a list of other projects that Havana has announced with great fanfare, which also sparked expectations at the time but have since been forgotten.
Speaking of unfulfilled promises, Moscow in 2023 granted the Cuban government an extension of the payment deadline until 2040. Loans for building power plants It never saw the light of day, and Havana never took responsibility for its fate.
In 2015, Moscow signed an agreement with Havana to provide it with up to 2.2 billion euros in state export credits. It was reported at the time that these funds would be allocated to the construction of power units at the Máximo Gómez and Ernesto Guevara thermal power plants in Mariel and Santa Cruz del Norte, respectively.
The first will build a 200MW generating unit, and the second will build another three generating units of the same power. Implementation of the project on the Russian side will be carried out by Inter RAO-Export, the leader in this sector in the Eurasian country.
The initial terms of the loan assumed use between 2016 and 2024, with Havana to repay the loan over a ten-year period, with the first payment due one year after the energy installation is started up, or by February 2025 at the latest, according to the initial agreement.
Cuban state media has made no mention of the issue, despite the fact that it is a new debt that adds to the billions of dollars owed by the Cuban government, which has rarely honoured the loans it has received.
In 2014, Russia and Cuba signed a series of energy cooperation agreements, including medium- and long-term plans to reduce Cuba’s dependence on imported fossil fuels. However, in the rapprochement between the two governments in recent months, there was no specific mention of what happened to these projects. Instead, there was discussion of building new refineries.
Meanwhile, Cuba’s electricity crisis has intensified in recent years, and instead of investing in building power plants, the island’s regime has chosen to lease seven power plants, five of which are in operation, from Turkey’s Karadeniz Holding, which operates the island’s port and has pledged an ambitious plan for clean energy.
[ad_2]
Source link
