Washington suffocates Caracas and it is Havana that is left out of breath. The US pressure on Venezuela’s “ghost fleet” greatly harms Cuba that now, in the worst of its systemic crisis, it also sees crude oil shipments from its Bolivarian ally plummet.
The situation in the Caribbean and its possible escalation has all the ingredients to aggravate the already critical economic and energy situation of the island, something that the US Secretary of State surely contemplates from the first moment, Marco Rubioin the opinion of experts consulted by EFE.
“The most likely thing is that with the recent measures in the Caribbean, these deliveries (of oil from Venezuela to Cuba) will fall,” says Cuban economist and political scientist Arturo López-Levy.
“The consequences for Cuba would be disastrous“says Cuban economist Ricardo Torres, author of the specialized publication Cuba Economic Review (Economic summary of Cuba).
Energy dependence
It all started in 2000, with the Comprehensive Cuba-Venezuela Cooperation Agreement, which ratified bilateral complicity and the agreement for Caracas to pay for Havana’s professional services (mainly doctors and teachers, but also security and defense experts) with crude oil.
Venezuela became Cuba’s main energy supplieroccupying the role of external economic support (for geopolitical reasons) that the USSR had in the Cold War.
The volume of Venezuelan shipments varied over the years. The official data is not public, but specialists agree that in the last ten years they decreased due to the drop in production and US sanctions.
And in that context, when Cuba was also suffering its fifth year of serious crisis – with a shortage of basic goods, high inflation with decrease, incessant blackouts, productive collapse, deterioration of public services and mass migration – the president of the United States, Donald Trump, set his eyes on Venezuela.
The US, the pressure on Venezuela and the repercussions in Cuba
He US naval encirclement to the Venezuelan “ghost fleet” has been a new twist for Cuba, something that is not a coincidence in López-Levy’s opinion.
“Trump’s offensive against Venezuela, quietly, wants to overthrow the Government of Cuba, with the same priority or more” than ending the Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, he says. For Rubio, he adds, everything is “a single problem,” “Castro-Chavismo.”
Independent estimates suggest that Cuba required between 110,000 and 120,000 barrels of oil per day this year. Of those, about 40 thousand are national production; the rest have to be sought outside.
Venezuela, which contributed 100 thousand barrels a day, sent an average of 27 thousand this year, according to the specialized service of the economic agency. Reuters.
To reduce this gap of up to 50 thousand barrels per day (which in Cuba currently translates into blackouts of 20 hours a day, paralyzed industries and queues at gas stations) some support has emerged, but it is insufficient. Havana does not have foreign currency to buy that difference on the market.
Cuban government rejects US naval blockade against Venezuela and reaffirms its support for Maduro
Relations with Russia and Mexico
Moscow has sent about 6,000 barrels a day in 2025, according to Cuban expert Jorge Piñón, from the Energy Institute of the University of Texas (USA), who last Wednesday advanced to EFE the arrival to the island of a new Russian tanker with 330 thousand barrels.
Torres points out that Russia is the “only country that could be a real alternative to Venezuela,” but estimates that between the war in Ukraine, its economic problems and the persecution of its own “ghost fleet” it is not in a position to assume that role.
Then there is Mexico, which last year sent about 23 thousand barrels a day to the island, but this year only about 2,500according to data from the state oil company Pemex.
Torres speaks here of the Mexican need to “take care of the relationship” with the US, the destination of 85% of its exports.
For his part, López-Levy believes that the Mexican president, Claudia Sheinbaum, is even willing to make “political sacrifices” for Cuba, but considers that “she is close to the limit of what she can do.”
And China?
In this context, López-Levy continues, “the question is who would finance purchases in other markets, and who would dare to sell and transport the fuel under the current conditions of American harassment.”
In his opinion, China could play a “key” role, granting credits to Cuba or its potential suppliers (in dollars or yuan). “It is a geopolitical decision, not an ideological one,” he adds.
López-Levy recommends “not underestimating the capacity for resistance and resilience of the Cuban system, even in the most difficult conditions,” despite the context of the “brutal” economic, energy, food and “confidence” crisis in Cuba.
However, he distinguishes between Cuba’s temporary survival under the current US “siege” of its Venezuelan partner and the structural crisis that the country is suffering, something in his opinion with no “prospect for a solution.”
