Refining National Crude Oil: A Difficult Path Yielding Results

The Hermanos Díaz refinery in Santiago de Cuba has achieved a significant technological feat by successfully adapting to process heavy crude oil, a move that has revitalized its operations after a period of losses and emigration of skilled personnel between 2016 and 2021. This adaptation allows the refinery to convert imported heavy crude, which is treated with a solvent to become medium crude, into usable derivatives.

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That technological feat allowed our company to leave behind the period between 2016 and 2021, marked by losses, meager production, and the lamentable exodus of engineers, technicians, and service personnel.

However, the refinery's progress has been hampered by U.S. sanctions, particularly those imposed by the Trump administration, which cut off the supply of imported crude oil. This situation forced the refinery to rely on its own efforts and ingenuity to overcome the challenges, echoing Fidel Castro's call for self-emancipation. The refinery, originally designed in the 1980s to process light crude, required substantial modifications.

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Again, the option was to emancipate ourselves by ourselves and with our own efforts, as the Commander in Chief advised in the concept of Revolution. He was the one who promoted the expansion and modernization of our plant in the 80s, but I want to emphasize that it was designed to process light crude.

The refinery, one of Cuba's four, processes imported heavy crude into various products, including naphtha, gasoline, fuel for drilling rigs and thermoelectric plants, fuel oil, and asphalt. This complex process, involving over 700 workers and significant technological adjustments, has been driven by collective ingenuity and the "innovators and rationalizers" movement. The success has helped retain qualified personnel and generate profits, averting an uncertain future for the industry.

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If at the end of the last decade we had resigned ourselves to the technological restrictions that, obviously, made it impossible to refine heavy crude, the fate of this important industry would have been very uncertain. Therefore, in unity, we overcame what seemed invincible.