After months of a debilitating energy crisis that has caused widespread power outages, Cuba’s oil reserves has run dry, the government said, which is likely to plunge the country into even more frequent, bigger and longer nationwide blackouts.
The government has been grappling with a severe energy crisis for more than two years because of crumbling infrastructure and a dwindling supply from its longtime benefactor Venezuela.
While Cuba produces some oil for domestic use, power plants are down and supplies have been exhausted, Vicente de la O Levy, Cuba’s minister of energy and mines, said on Wednesday night.
“We have absolutely no fuel oil, absolutely no diesel,” Mr. De la O Levy said. “In Havana, the blackouts today exceed 20 or 22 hours.”
When electricity returns, it can be for as little as an hour and a half, he said.
Venezuelan fuel stopped flowing to Cuba entirely in January, after the United States seized Venezuela’s leader and took control of Venezuela’s oil industry. Later, the Trump administration imposed an effective blockade barring all foreign oil from reaching Cuba, which had also received shipments from Mexico.
The governments in Havana and Washington have been engaged in secret negotiations for weeks, with no signs of progress. For Cuba, the goal is to end the energy blockade. For the United States, the talks are focused on ending the government’s grip on the economy and ending political repression.
In recent months, many Cuban cities beyond Havana have been hit with prolonged daily blackouts. The lack of oil has forced people to rely on charcoal or even wood to cook, and some people have taken to the streets, banging on pots and pans to express their frustration.
A delivery of 100,000 tons of oil from Russia last month permitted by the Trump administration provided a reprieve. But those supplies have been exhausted, Mr. de la O Levy said.
He warned that energy shortages were expected to worsen in coming weeks because temperatures were rising and the demand on the power grid increased during summer months.
President Miguel Díaz-Canel acknowledged that the energy situation was “particularly tense.”
“This dramatic worsening has a single cause: the genocidal energy blockade to which the United States subjects our country,” he said on X.
Before the Russian fuel shipment arrived, Cuba said it had received a single fuel delivery since December. Cuba needs at least eight tanker deliveries per month to run the country, Mr. Díaz-Canel said.
The energy minister said that even solar power was not a reliable alternative because the grid was too weak to handle the electric current supplied by solar panel parks.
The Trump administration has blamed what it said was the government’s failure to manage its economy for Cuba’s energy crisis.
“The reason why they don’t have oil is because they don’t have any money to pay for oil,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a March interview with The New York Times, in which he discounted the role of the administration’s oil blockade.
“The problem they’re facing is that usually when people give you oil, they expect to get paid for it,” he said. “And these guys have no money.”
Cuba produces 40,000 barrels a day but uses about 100,000 barrels daily. It relied on donations from Mexico and Venezuela to make up the difference.
“The little power we are generating is being used to protect hospitals, high-priority economic sites and a number of other circuits that must be protected due to system fluctuations,” Mr. de la O Levy said.
Jorge Piñón, an expert on Cuban energy at the University of Texas, said that he had predicted that Cuba would most likely run out of oil reserves in March, but that the nation managed to limp along a bit longer.
Now, even delivery trucks that carry diesel fuel have no diesel to run their engines, he said.
“The chain of supply is empty,” he said. “That’s where they are now. Before, they used to have some oil here and some there.”
The blackouts have left some Cubans sleeping on rooftops to escape the heat. Others wake up at odd hours when the power is briefly on to make coffee, charge telephones and cook the next day’s meals. If the electricity goes out in the midst of cooking, they must turn to charcoal.
Hermes Marian, 53, who drives refinery employees to work each day in Santiago de Cuba, a city in eastern Cuba, said the United States’ oil blockade was unjust.
“It can’t be right — it’s not right,” Mr. Marian said. “Here, it’s the people who are suffering.”
Eliannis Urgellés López, 40, of Guantánamo, also in eastern Cuba, uses an electric stove to cook but has a ready supply of charcoal for when the power goes out.
Ever since oil deliveries from Venezuela ended, she said, a good chunk of her government salary goes to buying charcoal.
“Venezuela was the lifeline for everything,” she said. “We depended on Venezuela for many things: transportation, electricity.”
Ed Augustin contributed reporting.
Frances Robles is a Times reporter covering Latin America and the Caribbean. She has reported on the region for more than 25 years.
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