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Cuba has completely run out of diesel and fuel oil, the country’s energy minister said on Wednesday, as Havana faces its worst rolling blackouts in decades amid a US blockade that has strangled the island of fuel.
“We have absolutely no fuel (oil), and absolutely no diesel,” the energy minister, Vicente de la O Levy, said on state media, adding that the national grid was in a “critical” state. “We have no reserves.” Fuel oil is a product derived from crude oil distillation used to generate heat or power.
The minister said blackouts had increased dramatically across Havana, with many neigbhourhoods in the capital without light for up to 22 hours a day.
The national grid, De la O Levy said, was operating entirely on domestic crude oil, natural gas and renewable energy.
Cuba has installed 1,300 megawatts of solar power over the past two years, but much of that capacity is lost to grid instability amid the fuel shortages, he said, reducing efficiency and output.
He said Cuba continued negotiations to import fuel despite the blockade, but said rising global oil and transportation prices amid the US-Israeli war with Iran were further complicating that effort.
“Cuba is open to anyone that wants to sell us fuel,” he said.
Neither Mexico nor Venezuela, once top suppliers of oil to Cuba, has sent fuel to the island since the US president, Donald Trump’s January 2026 executive order threatening to slap tariffs on any country shipping fuel to the communist-run nation.
Only a single large oil tanker, the Russian-flagged Anatoly Kolodkin, has delivered crude oil to Cuba since December, providing temporary relief in April.
The renewed power cuts in Havana and beyond come as the US blockade on fuel imports to Cuba enters its fourth month, crippling public services across the Caribbean island of nearly 10 million people.
The UN last week called Trump’s fuel blockade unlawful, saying it had obstructed the “Cuban people’s right to development while undermining their rights to food, education, health, and water and sanitation.”
In March, Trump declared that he expects to have “the honour of taking Cuba”, amid US negotiations with Havana over the country’s future.
The US has sought to intensify pressure on Cuba, its longtime foe, since seizing Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro in January. Trump has since cut off Venezuelan oil shipments to Cuba and threatened to impose tariffs on any country selling oil to the country, stating that Cuba would receive “no more oil or money” as a result of his actions.
But Trump appeared to relax his blockade by allowing the Anatoly Kolodkin to dock and off-load its oil. “If a country wants to send some oil into Cuba right now, I have no problem, whether it’s Russia or not,” the US president told reporters on Air Force One, on 30 March.
Critics say Trump’s blockade has resulted in a deepening humanitarian crisis on the already economically troubled island, which has forced schools and universities to shut, thrown the health care system into chaos and ravaged the tourism industry.
Additional reporting by Tom Phillips and Reuters
