At a gas station in Caracas, April 26, 2021 (AFP/Archives/Yuri CORTEZ)
Every morning at 05:00 on the radio it’s Bingo for the inhabitants of the Venezuelan state of Merida. The 5, then the 6 come out: on that day, only cars whose registration ends with one of these two digits have the right to refuel at the associated service station.
Venezuela, yet an oil producer, is again facing – especially in the provinces – a shortage of gasoline due to refining and distribution problems.
To avoid the endless queues and tensions that they generate, the governor of Merida (west) Jehyson Guzman (pro-power) has set up this lottery, the service stations having been assigned two numbers each.
Venezuela has been suffering from fuel shortages for more than 10 years, even though gasoline, whose price is subsidized, is paradoxically cheap. It was even almost free in the past. In 2019, an egg in a supermarket cost the equivalent of 90 million liters of fuel.
Fares were dollarized in 2020, set at 50 cents per litre, but subsidized fuel stations remain.
This low price promotes the black market, and smuggling to neighboring Brazil and Colombia aggravates the shortage situation.
In this context, Mario Vargas, a 69-year-old engineer, sees this surprising lotto with a good eye: “Once I spent six days and five nights in a queue waiting and when I arrived at the station, they only gave me 30 litres,” he said.
In 2020, at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, another state, Portuguesa (west), had also set up Bingo to allocate quotas to service stations.
Nearly 1,200 km from Mérida, at the other end of the country, in the state of Bolivar (southeast) Ana Graterol, 42, laments, “plunging into chaos” of queues in front of a station -service from Puerto Ordaz.
“The situation has gotten worse,” she said, stuck in a long line of cars stretching in front of a subsidized gas station. She will spend the night waiting.
It is not uncommon in the country to see car queues of several kilometers waiting for the opening of a service station.
In a queue to access a gas station in Caracas on September 11, 2020 (AFP/Archives/Federico PARRA)
According to trade unionists in the oil sector, the country’s main refineries, Amuay and Cardon, have been closed in recent days due to technical problems. The public company PDVSA, on the other hand, did not report any problems.
“A lot of people can’t stand (to wait) and leave,” explains Elibia Mendoza. For this carrier, however, there is no other alternative in a country in crisis with high inflation: “we don’t all have the money to fill up” with unsubsidized gasoline.
© 2023 AFP
Did you like this article ? Share it with your friends with the buttons below.
