He Cuban Government There is a possibility that the island, just over a month after the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, will be on the verge of an “acute fuel shortage.”
In an unusual television appearance, the Cuban president, Miguel Díaz-Canel, acknowledged this Thursday that the energy situation is “complex” and that, after the tap is turned off from Caracas, Cubans are going to “live in difficult times (…), very difficult.”
It is not for less. According to different independent calculations, Venezuelan oil covered 30% of the island’s energy needs in 2025. Likewise, two thirds of the fuel the country needs must be imported.
In this regard, Díaz-Canel recognized two points that reveal the severity of the crisis. On the one hand, the island has not received fuel from abroad since last December. On the other hand, Havana has paralyzed all its energy production with diesel and fuel oil engines (40% of the energy mix) due to the US oil blockade.
For the moment, the authorities have prioritized the little electricity generation to attend to economic activities during the day, such as irrigation in the fields, and the operation of “productive entities.”
Díaz-Canel did not give details about what the island will do to avoid energy collapse. He limited himself to ensuring that Havana will not give up “receiving fuel” from abroad and that it is “taking all the steps so that the country can have fuel income again.”
Díaz-Canel confirms that Cuba has not received fuel since December
Survival measures
The president assured that the oil blockade will have serious consequences, for which a series of emergency measures are being implemented that will “demand efforts.” “It is completely suffocating us,” he added.
He highlighted that the US measures will “affect food transportation, food production, public transportation, the operation of hospitals, institutions of all types, schools, the production of the economy, tourism…”.
Given this scenario, the president added that the Government adopted a series of emergency measures that take as a reference the “indications” of former President Fidel Castro during the so-called Special Period, the depression that the fall of the Soviet bloc meant for the island.
Díaz-Canel revived the concept of the “zero option”, a survival plan in the face of a scenario of imported “zero oil” that involved extreme rationing, food self-sufficiency, the use of animal traction, charcoal for cooking and non-motorized transportation, among other measures.
“They are contemplated (some of these measures), also updated because there are different situations in these directives,” added the president.
Chronic crisis
Cuba has been suffering a serious energy crisis for several years due to the frequent breakdowns of its obsolete thermoelectric plants and the lack of foreign currency to import the fuels necessary to fuel distributed generation.
The US military operation in Caracas on January 3 meant for Havana, in addition to the blow to a key regional ally, the end of vital energy supplies for the island.
Different experts estimate that of the 110,000 barrels of oil per day that Cuba needs to satisfy its energy needs, Venezuela contributed about 30,000 in 2025.
Then US President Donald Trump added another twist to the pressure on Cuba by signing a presidential order on January 29 that threatened trade tariffs on all countries that supplied oil to the island.
The Cuban expert Jorge Piñón, a specialist at the Energy Institute of the University of Texas (USA), estimated that EFE that, if it did not receive new oil shipments, Cuba would be in a “serious crisis” by March.
