The Cuban capital is experiencing its worst power outages in decades due to the US blockade, and the country’s Energy Minister Vincente de la O has reported that it has completely run out of fuel, Reuters reports.
The minister told state media that the country has run out of oil and diesel and the power grid is in critical condition: “We have no reserves.”
Power outages have widened this week, with many neighborhoods in Havana without electricity for 20 to 22 hours a day, adding to the strain on a city already strained by shortages of food, fuel and medicine. The minister said the grid is fully operational, using local crude oil, natural gas and renewable energy sources. Cuba has installed solar panels over the past two years, generating about 1,300 megawatts of power, but most of that was lost to grid instability caused by fuel shortages. De la O said this reduced efficiency and utilization of the output.
The minister said Cuba was continuing to negotiate for imports of resources despite the US blockade, but the war in Iran and the resulting rise in fuel prices and transportation costs on the international market were hampering those efforts. He added that
Cuba was ready to cooperate with anyone willing to sell it fuel.
Neither Mexico nor Venezuela, Cuba’s main oil suppliers, have shipped fuel to the island since US President Donald Trump ordered in January that the Americans would impose tariffs on any country that cooperates with communist-ruled Havana. One oil shipment has arrived in Cuba since December, carried by a Russian-flagged tanker. That provided some respite in April.
Power outages have returned to Havana and elsewhere, and the US has been blocking oil supplies for four months, cutting off public services for nearly ten million people on the Caribbean island. The UN last week called the US blockade illegal, saying it undermines the Cuban people’s right to development by denying them access to food, education, healthcare, clean water and sanitation.
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