(20 Sep 2019) A petrol shortage in Cuba has turned filling a tank into an ordeal even for a country used to waiting in lines.
Around Havana, drivers spend days hunting desperately for gas, calling friends and updating online chat groups with sightings of diesel, regular and higher-octane fuel at gas stations.
Lines this week have come to stretch for blocks with waits up to five hours long.
Drivers park and shut off their cars to wait in the shade and chat with friends as cars crawl past pumps far in the distance.
Increasingly, gas stations are running out with people still waiting in line.
Drivers have started lining up outside empty gas stations in the hope that a truck from the state-run fuel monopoly will come by to fill its pumps.
Cuban officials blame a U.S. policy of sanctioning ships that bring petroleum products from Venezuela, Cuba's main ally and source of highly subsidized fuel for two decades.
Outside observers say the broader cause is Cuba's energy overdependence on a single socialist ally whose oil industry has gone into freefall.
Cuba relies on Venezuela for about 60 percent of its daily consumption, according to some estimates.
Whatever the cause, the result is an energy shortage that's crippling Cuba's already slack economy and forcing people to spend much of their week worrying about how to get around.
Interminable gas lines are only the most visible sign of a fuel crisis that's led to cutbacks in public transport, public services and every sort of state-run business in one of the world's last centrally planned economies.
Train and bus services has been cut back, state employees are working half days and farmers are being asked to use oxen to pull ploughs instead driving tractors.
Police have been posted to bus stops and gas stations to control the long lines.
Public employees with state-owned cars have been told to pick up hitchhikers, a measure enforced by public inspectors last seen during the economic crash that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union.
The government says the arrival of tankers in October should relieve the situation somewhat, but many Cubans remain worried.
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