▲The ship Ocean Mariner arrived yesterday at the port of Havana. He did so using a Liberian flag.Photo Afp
Afp
La Jornada Newspaper
Saturday, January 10, 2026, p. 6
Havana., An oil tanker arrived yesterday in Havana loaded with 85 thousand barrels of crude oil from Mexico, a country that supplies hydrocarbons to Cuba, in the context of the crisis in Venezuela.
The tanker Ocean Mariner It left the Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex) terminal on January 5, located in Pajaritos in the port of Coatzacoalcos, Veracruz, bound for the Ñico López refinery in Havana, Jorge Piñón, a researcher at the University of Texas, told the AFP agency.
Pemex did not confirm this information upon request from the agency.
This week, President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo admitted that in the face of the crisis facing Venezuela, “evidently, Mexico becomes an important supplier” to the island; However, he stated that “no more oil is being sent than has been sent historically. There is no particular shipment.”
The president thus responded in her usual conference to a question about a report from the British newspaper Financial Times which revealed that in 2025 Mexican oil shipments to Cuba exceeded those to Venezuela.
Sheinbaum Pardo clarified that these deliveries are made under contracts or a “humanitarian aid” scheme, but his government has not made public these agreements or the way in which Havana pays for the crude oil.
Venezuela was the island’s main supplier
The arrival of Ocean Mariner to Cuba occurs in a context of extreme tension due to the capture of Nicolás Maduro in Caracas and the control that the United States has taken of Venezuela’s oil, which until a few months ago was the main supplier of crude oil to Cuba.
Since 2000, Cuba has secured its oil supply with Venezuela through an agreement signed with then-president Hugo Chávez (1999-2013), in exchange for sending doctors, teachers and other professionals to the South American nation.
Trump recently claimed that Cuba “is about to fall,” and threatened Mexico with ground attacks against drug cartels.
This statement is seen as a warning to President Sheinbaum that “if Mexico does not act more vigorously against drug trafficking, the negotiations” of the T-MEC trade agreement, scheduled for this year, could be stopped, national security and armed forces expert Raúl Benítez Manaut told AFP.
Furthermore, it is a warning that “they are going to start putting a lot of pressure on the Mexican government to cut off the oil supply to Cuba.”
Last September, Pemex informed the United States Securities Commission that its subsidiary, Gasolina Bienestar, has been sending oil to the Caribbean island since 2023 and that in the first nine months of the year it exported 17,200 barrels of crude oil per day, worth $400 million.
