LIMA, Peru – Jorge Piñón, the principal researcher at the Energy Institute at the University of Texas, warned that the situation in Cuba is “extremely critical” and collapse would be imminent if the Castro regime fails to obtain fuel in the coming weeks.
“If by mid-March we do not see a tanker on the horizon, Cuba will have reached zero hour. Because Cuba does not have strategic reserves and has never been able to have them,” said the expert in statements given to The Country.
In his words, the Island has lived hand-to-mouth in relation to oil and does not have the storage capacity to establish strategic reserves.
Piñón has been keeping an eye on the recent shipments of crude oil that Cuba has received, ensuring that the last of its kind was the Ocean Mariner that arrived on January 9 with some 85,000 barrels from Mexico.
“Mexico was sending Cuba its best crude oil, which is the Olmeca and the Isthmus. That surprised us because those two crude oils, medium and light, that Pemex has are very important,” says the researcher.
And the Government by Claudia Sheinbaum It was not exporting Mayan crude oil to the Island, the analyst considers, because Cuba’s refineries are old and do not have the conversion or processing capacity for that heavier crude oil.
Already last January, Piñón pointed out that Havana has little room for maneuver due to lack of liquidity to buy fuels on the international market. “They don’t have cash, they don’t have money, so they can’t go out to the European international markets and buy diesel and buy liquefied gas. Thus, Cuba is basically bankrupt,” he stated then in an interview with Martí Noticias.
In recent weeks, Washington has increased pressure on the Cuban regime in the energy field. On January 29, United States President Donald Trump signed an executive order declaring a “national emergency” and creating a process to impose tariffs on goods from countries that “sell or provide” oil to Cuba.
The provision places Mexico at the center of the potential impact, given that in 2025 it became the main supplier of crude oil to the Island, with around 44% of Cuban imports, according to calculations by the consulting firm Kpler cited by Financial Times. In recent days, Sheinbaum acknowledged that at least “temporarily” he has paused oil shipments to Cuba and defended that it is a sovereign decision, not dictated by Washington.
On January 29, the newspaper Financial Times He assured that the Island had “between 15 and 20 days” of oil available, which threatens to aggravate blackouts and fuel restrictions.
