Mexico became the main supplier of oil and derivatives to Cuba, raising the geopolitical cost in its relationship with the United States, which promoted supply restrictions to the island from Caracas, after the capture of the Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, according to specialists consulted by EFE this Wednesday.
While the Mexican Government maintained that it will continue with shipments, the US Secretary of Energy, Chris Wright, stated that so far the country has not been asked to stop crude oil shipments to the island.
Just last weekend, the Ocean Mariner oil tanker arrived in Havana Bay, loaded with some 86 thousand barrels of fuel from Mexico, as confirmed to EFE by the Energy Institute of the University of Texas.
However, at a time marked by political volatility in Washington, US President Donald Trump could push for tariffs to stop this trafficking, as he has done with Iran, warned Ramsés Pech, partner of the energy advisor Grupo Caraiva.
For his part, Gonzalo Monroy, director of the GMEC consulting firm, maintained that the Mexico-Cuba energy link “is not new,” although he stressed that “the political environment is,” recalling that the country has sent oil and fuel to the island since 1980.
In his opinion, the central problem is that, given the regional reconfiguration of supply, Mexico becomes more visible as an exporter to Cuba, which increases the risk of pressure with the United States.
In addition to the geopolitical front, Pech introduced an operational element, doubting the real capacity to sustain shipments if domestic production loses traction.
In this sense, he recalled that the state-owned Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex) and its private partners produce 1.6 million barrels per day (mbd), of which 1.3 mbd are from Pemex alone, far from its goal of 1.8 mbd.
In this framework, both Monroy and Pech converge on the opportunity cost, since each barrel destined for Cuba competes with internal supply needs, export objectives and income, which can raise alerts within Pemex if domestic volumes and production goals remain below expectations.
Between humanitarian aid and bad debts
Meanwhile, experts have pointed out that, although Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum defended crude oil exports to Cuba as humanitarian aid, Pemex ends up recording these shipments as bad debts in its financial books.
In recent days, President Sheinbaum admitted that, given the crisis that Venezuela is facing due to the intervention of the United States, “Mexico is evidently becoming an important supplier” to Cuba, although she stated that no more oil is being sent than had been sent historically.
“I asked Pemex, they did not send me the information, but they are not sending more oil than had been sent historically. There is no particular shipment,” said the president, during her morning press conference, in response to the investigations revealed by the newspaper Financial Times, which place Mexico as the island’s first supplier with estimates of 12 thousand barrels per day after the collapse of shipments from Venezuela.
Despite repeated requests to Pemex for updated data on shipments to Cuba, and the president’s promise to make them public, Mexico continues without offering official data in this regard, an opacity that shows the sensitivity of the issue and its special political sensitivity.
Regarding the economic angle, Monroy maintained that Mexico’s sales scheme incorporates a “discount level”, and that “Cuba does not pay”, so “that debt accumulates” and is recorded “as an account receivable”, until it becomes uncollectible and a new Government arrives and forgives this debt, as former President Enrique Peña Nieto (2012-2018) did in 2013.
