Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel acknowledged May 29 that the island receives oil and derivatives from Venezuela thanks to a secret “formula” that circumvents U.S. sanctions.
Díaz-Canel made these statements in his podcast “Desde la presidencia” (From the Presidency), which focused on the country’s prolonged daily blackouts. The program also featured the Minister of Energy and Mines, Vicente de la O Levy.
De la O explained that Venezuela remains Cuba’s main supplier of crude oil, although shipments have decreased in recent months due to U.S. sanctions against Caracas.
Exports, however, continue because Cuba and Venezuela have found a “formula.” “We are moving forward and finding solutions,” the minister added.
Then Díaz-Canel said: “We’re not going to explain this formula so they don’t persecute us.” The president then asserted that “one of the most important characteristics of the tightening of the blockade,” referring to Washington’s sanctions against the island, is “financial and energy persecution.”
De la O added that this is a “persecution” of the Cuban energy sector and that because of these sanctions, on several occasions, transfers in payment for the import of crude oil and its derivatives have not reached suppliers.
“It’s the perversity of a blockade that some believe doesn’t exist,” Díaz-Canel added, referring to the U.S. sanctions against Cuba, which began in the 1960s and have since been expanded and strengthened several times.
The island is suffering from a deep energy crisis, which has worsened since August 2024, with outages reaching up to 20 hours a day in large parts of the country. In the last seven months, there have also been four national blackouts, from which the island has taken days to recover.
The main causes are frequent breakdowns at thermoelectric plants, which have been in operation for decades and suffer from a chronic lack of investment and maintenance; and the shortage of fuel for generating engines, due to the state’s lack of foreign currency to import it.
Independent experts point out that the energy crisis is due to chronic underfunding of this sector, which has been entirely controlled by the Cuban state since the triumph of the revolution in 1959. The Cuban government, for its part, emphasizes the impact of sanctions.
Various independent calculations estimate that the government would need between $8 billion and $10 billion to revive the electricity grid.
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