Cuban blackouts increase

By Aussiegirl

From The Australian comes news of increasing power outages in Cuba.

Since Cuba relies on Venezuela for its oil I wonder what this means? I thought Castro and Hugo Chavez were all palsy-walsy and I would have been sure that providing Castro with plenty of oil would have been part of the deal. Looks like the two dictators may not be seeing eye to eye on who is going to be whose Mini-Me. This is potentially good news for American interests if it means that these two communist thugs are not getting along.

The article also mentions that Venezuela's oil is clean and easily refinable -- the "light sweet crude" that we always hear mentioned on the daily business roundups. That's another reason it's so valuable to the United States because a shortage of refining capacity is one of the factors behind our currently high energy prices.

Anyway and off the subject -- light sweet crude always sounded almost tasty to me -- like pork bellies. "Would madam like a bit of light sweet crude to accompany her pork bellies a la Wall Street today?"

AFTER two months of almost daily blackouts, Cuban authorities announced that the trouble would drag on for weeks - at least until the end of July - in the middle of Cuba's sweltering summer.

"There is still a great deal of risk; there are a lot of limitations and there are still warning signs we can identify at all (power-generating) plants," Basic Industry Minister Yadira Garcia said on state television late Monday.

Garcia, a member of the Cuban Communist Party's politburo, last October replaced then minister Marcos Portal amid a prolonged energy crisis that President Fidel Castro said revealed that the national power system was "weak." To Cubans, this was not news.

Blackouts are so common in Cuba - a country of more than 11 million - that the running joke is that they are the everyday reality, while the unusual thing is a welcome and attention-grabbing "lights-on."

A government statement criticized Portal for having rejected colleagues' advice and consequently making mistakes.

A breakdown in May at Cuba's main oil-fueled power plant in Matanzas province took months to repair, and blackouts have been rampant.
Led by Castro since 1959, Cuba has been in dire economic straits since the collapse of the former Soviet bloc which once provided subsidized food and fuel.

Havana has been unable to complete a Soviet-technology nuclear reactor that was once planned for Juragua.

And with its oil-burning plants, Cuba relies on Venezuelan imports, while its own crude, which is high in sulfur, requires costly cleaning to be used.