Rerouted diesel vessel bound for Cuba not coming to T&T

De­spite re­ports in in­ter­na­tion­al me­dia that a tanker car­ry­ing fu­el orig­i­nal­ly ‌bound for Cu­ba on Fri­day changed its des­ti­na­tion to Trinidad and To­ba­go, ship track­ers have now stat­ed the ves­sel is head­ed to Venezuela.

Ac­cord­ing to mul­ti­ple ship track­ers on­line, the Hong Kong-flagged ves­sel Sea Horse is now chart­ing a course to Puer­to Ca­bel­lo, west of the Venezue­lan cap­i­tal Cara­cas.

Ac­cord­ing to the track­er, the ves­sel is set to reach the Venezue­lan port on Tues­day. It was re­port­ed­ly east of An­tigua short­ly af­ter 1 pm yes­ter­day.

In­ter­na­tion­al news agency Reuters had re­port­ed on Fri­day that the ves­sel was head­ed to Trinidad, ac­cord­ing to LSEG ship-track­ing da­ta.

The Russ­ian-ori­gin ​car­go was bound for Cu­ba, ac­cord­ing to sev­er­al mar­itime in­tel­li­gence firms, but the ship had sus­pend­ed course in the mid­dle of the At­lantic Ocean since late Feb­ru­ary.

The ship was re­port­ed­ly loaded with diesel car­go set for Cu­ba; how­ev­er, it was di­vert­ed, caus­ing even more con­cern for the is­land, which is suf­fer­ing se­vere fu­el scarci­ty that has trig­gered pow­er black­outs.

Re­ports stat­ed Cu­ba on Tues­day re­con­nect­ed its pow­er grid and ​brought on­line its largest ther­mal elec­tric­i­ty plant, end­ing a na­tion­wide black­out that last­ed more than ​29 hours due to a US block­ade.

— Pe­ter Christo­pher