Mission gasoline, accomplished

As it is known in many parts of the world, in my beautiful country Venezuela, we are living a situation of scarcity of gasoline, which can be attributed to many factors and controversies that are not relevant. The important thing is that a few days ago, 5 ships arrived from Iran loaded with fuel and additives needed for the refineries, so a temporary plan to supply gasoline was initiated, according to the numerical terminals of the vehicle plates, according to the following schedule

Day 1: plates ending in 1 and 2
Day 2: plates ending in 3 and 4
Day 3: plates ending in 5 and 6
Day 4: plates ending in 7 and 8
Day 5: plates ending in 9 and 0

This cycle is repeated in succession.

It is important to mention that the gasoline shortage began practically with the decree of strict social quarantine by covid-19, on March 13 of the present year, and it is from June 1 when the service stations are activated again, but this time under a new scheme of prices for the gasoline, that includes a first stage, of defined time:

First, a direct subsidy to the Venezuelan citizen of 5000 BS/lt, up to 120 liters per month. In this case, it is necessary to go through a payment device with fingerprint capture that registers the amount of fuel required in the Patria System (which is where the consumption control is carried out). It is also possible to pay in cash: in national or convertible currency.

The second modality is the unsubsidized price of 0.5 $/lt, for which 200 service stations were made available nationwide, from private sectors, in order to serve anyone who wishes to make use of them, and gasoline can be placed without any control. It is worth mentioning that all the service stations can also supply at the international price vehicles that do not opt for the subsidy, either because they already supplied the 120 liters, or because they are company vehicles or simply because they are not registered in the Patria System.

And the third modality is the supply of fuel to vehicles in the transport and food sector free of charge, so as not to impact on the prices of their products.

From March to June, fuel was only supplied to priority sectors such as health, food, transport and people who, for health reasons, required special treatments such as dialysis and chemotherapy. Sectors not included did not have access to gasoline, so some bought on a speculative market at prices above $2 per liter.

Since the sale was activated for the whole population, the queues are very long and there are many people who sleep around the service stations, taking care of their stalls in order to be able to fill up the next day, a whole odyssey. Even when more than 15 days have passed, the queues remain, although a little less long. We pray to God that this situation will be resolved soon and that we will not have to go through so many setbacks when it comes to putting gas in our vehicles.

I tell you that my vehicle's license plate ends in 3 and in the first cycle I was not able to fill up because of the long lines. From a group of WhatsApp that my wife has we learned that a station the users organized themselves and the day before in the morning they meet by order of arrival marking the cars with successive numbers and when they finish they coordinate to confirm the numbering in hours of the afternoon and there they agree to arrive the following day of dawn and to make the definitive tail, a true odyssey? I tell you that when it was my turn, I woke up at 3 am and went to the meeting place being number 39, I was super happy because I would surely fill up, we left and after the meeting in the afternoon we were informed that the fuel truck would not arrive at that service station, so I had to wait for the next cycle.