Russian oil tanker heading to Cuba amid US economic blockade

Original article by Guardian staff and agencies

Hundreds of thousands of barrels of Russian oil are heading to Cuba, according to maritime tracking data, as the communist island suffers blackouts under a US economic blockade and Donald Trump threatens to take it over.

The sanctioned Russian tanker Anatoly Kolodkin loaded 730,000 barrels of crude in the Russian port of Primorsk on 8 March, and on Wednesday at 1600 GMT was in the eastern Atlantic, bound for Cuba, maritime analytics firm Kpler said.

Its data showed the Russian-flagged vessel, owned by the Russian state shipping company Sovcomflot, was scheduled to unload at the Matanzas oil terminal on the north of the island about 23 March.

Trump declared on Monday that he expects to have “the honour of taking Cuba”, claiming that he could do “anything I want” amid US negotiations with Havana over the country’s future.

The US has sought to intensify pressure on Cuba, its longtime foe, since seizing Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro in January. Trump has since cut off Venezuelan oil shipments to Cuba and threatened to impose tariffs on any country selling oil to the country, stating that Cuba would receive “no more oil or money” as a result of his actions.

Another tanker, the Hong Kong-flagged Sea Horse, loaded nearly 200,000 barrels of diesel in late January off Cyprus from another tanker, according to Kpler data.

It exited the Mediterranean on 13 February and has since been sailing west across the Atlantic, slowing down between late February and early March and following an erratic course, the tracker indicated. At 1630 GMT on Wednesday it was in the northwestern Caribbean, about 1,500 km (932 miles) from the Cuban coast.

The Russian-flagged Anatoly Kolodkin is listed as coming under sanctions against Russia by the United States, European Union and UK.

Cuba has imported no oil since 9 January, when Mexico delivered a shipment in the days after Maduro’s ouster. Mexico came under pressure from Trump to end such deliveries.

With Agence France-Press