Documents and ship monitoring services indicate that Venezuela's PDVSA state oil company has started using tankers that operate off radar in order to supply Cuba, its closest political ally. This is because the fleet of state-owned ships that had previously covered this route is dwindling.

Cuba and Venezuela, its principal oil supplier, have been using their own tankers exclusively to travel between the two nations for more than a decade.

Delay in maintenance has forced some ships to be taken out of service. Mexico, a new supplier of crude oil to Cuba, is using the same vessels. These two routes are being redesigned to bring the desperately needed fuel and crude oil to the island.

Sanctions imposed by the United States on Venezuelan and Cuban tanker fleets limit their travel. Dark fleet vessels are often operated by third parties and lack insurance in the west. They also send false location signals so as to conceal their movements.

PDVSA began in June co-loading crude oil and fuel oil cargoes, delivering a portion of the volume in Cuban waters and then departing to destinations in Asia for the remainder, according to shipping documents.

According to the monitoring service TankerTrackers.com, and a photo taken by Planet Labs, these vessels often spoof their signals, making them appear elsewhere in Caribbean, while discharging from Cuba.

According to documents and photos analyzed by TankerTrackers.com, one of the vessels was the Panama-flagged Neptune 6 which, last week, was near Cuba's Nipe Bay, transferring Venezuelan crude oil and fuel oil from the Cuba-flagged Esperanza. According to LSEG, the ship's transponder has been signaling a position north of Curacao from late May.

PDVSA, the Venezuelan and Cuban foreign affairs ministers did not comment. It wasn't immediately clear whether the use of a third-party vessel to supply Cuba was temporary.

Need Barrels?

The additional vessels could boost Venezuela's oil supplies to Cuba. This year, the Venezuelan oil exports have been at 27,000 barrels of crude per day, compared to 51,500 bpd for the same period in 2023.

The covert assistance comes at a time when the demand for electricity generated by oil-fired power plants is soaring during Cuba's hot summers.

Cuba has experienced a regular blackout, which was previously an occasional occurrence. Imported fuel is limited and logistical problems complicate the domestic fuel distribution system to its old power plants.

Cuban officials have also said that workers are tuning and maintaining power generation plants in preparation for the summer high demand season. They hope to see fewer blackouts over the next few months.

Cuba's oil storage capacity hasn't recovered fully since a fire that destroyed part of Matanzas, the island’s largest oil terminal. Due to the lack of tanks, suppliers are forced to move cargo onto other vessels used by Cuba for floating storage.

Reports indicate that in May, Mexico’s state-owned company Pemex resumed oil deliveries to Cuba following a three month pause on the same vessels which were used to transport oil from Venezuela. Marianna Pararaga reported from Houston and Dave Sherwood added reporting in Havana. Editing was done by Margueritachoy.