Madrid/Mexican government officials visited Cuba last May to explore investment opportunities in the energy sector. The information appears in the first report of the Claudia Sheinbaum executive, presented on Monday, when a year was completed since the president assumed the position.
“In that same month [por mayo]a meeting was held in Havana, Cuba, with people from energy, mines and industries and entrepreneurs in mining with operations in that country, in which possibilities of cooperation and investment opportunities were explored, ”says the document.
The information is contained in a section dedicated to indicating the most outstanding events in which the federal government “to promote the offer of the mining sector” participated. Although it is barely a paragraph within a document of more than 1,200 pages, the possibility opens a new way of cooperation between two governments whose relationship has been narrowed since the mandate of the predecessor of Sheinbaum, Andrés Manuel López Obrador (2018-2024).
Under the presidency of the former leader of Morena, Cuba began in 2023 to receive raw and fuels from Mexico, contributing to relieve the fall of exports from Venezuela, his first supplier. That year, the country sent about 16,000 barrels of oil and derived per day to the island on average.
That year, the country sent some 16,000 barrels of oil and a day to be referred to the island as average
The Mexican press began from the beginning to ask – and ask – if the oil was being given, in the midst of a debt crisis of the state Pemex, or sold to Cuba, breaking the economic sanctions of the USA. The president of the oil company denied that the product and the then Mexican chancellor Alicia Bárcena said in an interview that the country should study how to collect how to collect how to collect how to collect how it would sanctions “Why not? You have to see how it can be, what kind of transaction. We have a financial situation, of course. It is not easy to donate,” he said.
Doubt has never been clear, although it is known that since July 2023 Pemex channels through a subsidiary company, welfare gasolines, SA de CV [Sociedad Anónima de Capital Variable]the purchase of crude oil and oil derived products from some of its subsidiaries to export them to Cuba, according to statements of the state. The company argues that the company has “with procedures to ensure that these sales are made in accordance with the applicable law”.
However, Cuba’s little capacity to pay doubts, to the point that among the options that some experts raise is that it is Venezuela who pays to compensate for the decline of its exports or that it is a barture between Mexico and the government of the island. In 2024, the Amount ascended Up to 20,100 barrels per day (BPD), 20% more than in the previous period, although derivatives fell 18%. In total, the joint value of shipments was estimated at 600 million dollars, twice as much as the previous year.
Shortly after the start of the Sheinbaum government, in October 2024 there was the first major disconnection of the island’s national electrical system. At that time, the new president declared her intention to continue the path of her predecessor and cooperate with Cuba. The president sent “for humanitarian reasons” a cargo of 400,000 tons of crude oil and technical support to the island.
In the first quarter of 2025, Pemex sent 19,600 barrels of oil per day to the island, whose value amounts to more than 166 million dollars. But in addition, the Mexican press has found that only between May 29 and June 27, the company carried out 39 export operations aboard 20 ships to Cuba, which included 10.2 million raw barrels and 132.5 million liters of refined products, which would mean another 850 million dollars.
The company carried out 39 export operations on board 20 ships to Cuba that would be 850 million dollars
Although the shipments seem to increase, the electric union of Cuba continues to report problems due to lack of fuel, such as this Monday, when the lack of availability of 693 megawatts (MW) was attributed to this cause. To this were added 384 of thermal energy deficit as the main problems that left the expected affectation for peak schedule in 1990 MW.
There is also doubt how Cuba is storing the shipments of such amounts of hydrocarbons, since from the fire of the fire Superanqueros Base in Matanzasin August 2022 – which also supposed the loss of 17 human lives – and with their reconstruction tasks still endlessly, it lacks the logistics capacity required for it.
In addition to energy and mines cooperation, the Mexican government has spent around 2,019 million pesos (about 93 million euros) to hire Cuban doctors And some 22 million dollars to print books For the island. They also maintain both nations, agreements in pharmaceutical matters, including the purchase of abdala vaccines against COVID-19 without having received the endorsement of the World Health Organization.
