Mexican fuel flows to Cuba as island faces blackouts and loss of Russian and Venezuelan oil

MEXICO CITY (AP) — As Cuba grapples with blackouts and a deepening economic crisis, Mexico has sent nearly half a million barrels of crude oil and diesel in just a span of days, oil shipment data provided to The Associated Press showed Thursday.

It comes at a time when shipments of Russian and Venezuelan oil that long kept the island afloat have largely petered out, leaving Mexico as one of Cuba's few lifelines.

“Mexico now is key because Venezuela has dropped its supplies to Cuba, Russian oil it's nowhere to be seen,” said Jorge Piñon, senior research fellow at the University of Texas at Austin's Energy Center, which tracks the shipments. “And so today, Mexico's oil deliveries to Cuba are extremely important.”

Approximately 412,000 barrels of crude oil from Mexico's state-run oil company, Pemex, arrived at the port city of Cienfuegos either early Thursday morning or late Wednesday night, according to data compiled by Piñon, who tracks shipments using oil tracking services and satellite technology.

An additional 67,000 barrels of what appears to be diesel were sent Wednesday night and are set to arrive in Santiago de Cuba early next week.

The approximately $31 million in fuel comes on top of at least $300 million in fuel sent by Mexico to Cuba since the beginning of 2023, Piñon said. While such oil shipments were paused for six months at the height of campaigning for Mexico's presidential election, oil is once again flowing to Cuba under recently inaugurated Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum.

Sheinbaum on Thursday appeared to confirm the recent shipments to Cuba, but said they were just a small fraction of the 1.6 million to 1.8 million barrels of oil Mexico produces in a day.

“We are going to support Cuba,” Sheinbaum said at her morning news briefing. “Even if they criticise it, we are going to show solidarity.”

Cuban authorities did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the oil shipments.

The shipment comes at a dire moment in Cuba, where large-scale blackouts left 10 million people — already reeling from a deepening economic crisis — without power for days earlier this month.

Cuba's government has faced simmering frustrations and rare protests after it sharply hiked gas prices, further squeezing the pocketbooks of Cubans, who struggle to pay for the most basic food items, like eggs and chicken. The Cuban government blames the US economic embargo for its woes, but Cuba's power grid has been left in disrepair and the government has long failed to invest in alternative energies like solar power, despite a plethora of sunshine.

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