Algeria Exports More Oil To Cuba To Compensate The Lack Of Venezuelan Supplies

National oil company Sonatrach will provide, in the coming days, Cuba with shipments of crude oil, to compensate the lack of supplies from Venezuela in light of the economic crisis in this country, due to the collapse of oil prices, as a shipment of more than half a million barrels is expected to reach Cuba by the beginning of next October.

Reuters news agency, quoted Cuban sources that are linked to the file, as saying that Sonatrach will export the crude oil to Cuba for the first time in its history, so as to compensate for the shortfall in production in Venezuela, which lost about 40% of the production capacity of oil due to the economic crisis in the first four months of the current year.

Same source added that Cuba will receive, by next October, about 515.000 barrels of Algerian light oil, to be followed by other operations of sending shipments in November and December to Cuba, but without revealing the quantity that will be exported.

Previously, Sonatrach exported several shipments of light crude oil in 2014 to Venezuela because of maintenance and repair operations in the most important oil refineries in this friendly country.

This process coincides with the doubling of Algeria’s gas exports towards Italy in the first four months of 2016, as the increase reached 87.5% compared to the same period of the previous year.

These figures were based on the semi-annual financial outcome of the Italian Eni, which copy is available to Echorouk, and which showed that Algeria returned to the second position among gas suppliers to Italy after Russia, by volumes that reached 6.13 billion cubic meters, compared to 3.27 billion cubic meters during the same period of 2015.