A large fire, accompanied by a dense column of black smoke, began this Friday at the facilities of the Ñico López refinery in Havana. The Cuban authorities have not yet reported the causes and extent of the incident, which occurred in the middle of the afternoon and was clearly visible from the entire coast of the bay of the Cuban capital. He assured around 4:20 p.m. local time on social networks that the fire had occurred in a warehouse of the infrastructure and that it was now under control. He did not speak of possible injuries or deaths.
Ñico López is one of the three refineries in Cuba. It is an old energy facility that was nationalized in 1960 and has the capacity to process both heavy national crude oil and imported oil. However, it has had technical problems for years. It has also been warned of its proximity to densely populated areas, with the risk that this entails, and of the impact of its discharges on the bay’s ecosystem.
The fire occurs in the midst of the energy crisis in Cuba. Since mid-2024, which have intensified in recent months, due to the frequent breakdowns of its thermoelectric plants and the lack of foreign currency to import enough fuel. In addition, Washington cut off shipments of Venezuelan crude oil to the country in early January and three weeks later threatened with tariffs on countries that supplied oil to the island.
Cuba is no stranger to fires in oil facilities. In August 2022, the super fuel tanker base in the province of Matanzas (west), the country’s main strategic reserves infrastructure, burned in flames after a lightning strike.
It took the island a week to control the fire, which became the largest industrial disaster in the country’s recent history and claimed the lives of 17 people. The fire completely damaged the structure of up to four tanks – out of a total of eight – with a capacity of 50,000 cubic meters per year.
