Cuba’s electrical grid collapses amid US oil blockade

Cuba’s national electric grid has collapsed, the country’s grid operator has said, leaving approximately 10 million people without power amid a US-imposed oil blockade that has crippled the island’s already obsolete generation system.The grid operator, UNE, said on social media on Monday that it was investigating the causes of the blackout, the latest in a series of widespread outages that last for hours or days and that last weekend sparked a rare violent protest in the communist-run country.The US has ratcheted up pressure this year on its longtime foe Cuba since capturing the Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro – Cuba’s most important foreign benefactor – in January. The US president, Donald Trump, cut off Venezuelan oil shipments to Cuba and threatened to put tariffs on any country that sold oil to Cuba, strangling the Caribbean island’s already antiquated grid.Cuba said on Friday that it was in talks with the US with the hope of defusing the crisis. Trump has said in recent weeks that Cuba is on the verge of collapse and is eager to make a deal with the US.Cuba has received only two small vessels carrying oil imports this year, according to LSEG ship-tracking data seen by Reuters on Monday.The first tanker discharged fuel at the Havana port in January, coming from Mexico, which was a regular supplier to the island until then. The second vessel, from Jamaica, discharged liquefied petroleum gas – known as cooking gas – in February.Venezuela, once Cuba’s main oil supplier, has sent no fuel to the island this year.Venezuela’s state oil company, PDVSA, last month loaded gasoline in a tanker that it had previously used to transport fuel to Cuba, but the vessel has not left Venezuelan waters, PDVSA documents and tanker monitoring data showed.No large imports have entered this year through Cuba’s main hubs of Matanzas or Moa, which typically handle crude for refining and fuel oil for power generation, according to satellite images analysed by TankerTrackers.com. The ports of Havana and Cienfuegos have not had import activity in more than a month, it added.