Cuba has run out of diesel and fuel oil amid US oil blockade

An electric tricycle driver passes in front of a gas station as Cuba announces new and variable fuel prices at the pump beginning on May 15 to better reflect the actual costs of importing gas and diesel amid an ongoing US fuel blockade, in Havana, Cuba, May 12, 2026. REUTERS

Cuba has completely run out of diesel and fuel oil, the country's energy and mines minister said on Wednesday, as the capital Havana faces its worst rolling blackouts in decades amid a U.S. blockade that has strangled the island of fuel.

"We have absolutely no fuel (oil), and absolutely no diesel," Energy Minister Vicente de la O said on state-run media, adding that the national grid was in a "critical" state. "We have no reserves."

Blackouts have increased dramatically this week and last across the capital Havana, with many neigbhourhoods without light for 20 to 22 hours a day, the minister said, heightening tensions in a city already exhausted by food, fuel and medicine shortages.

The national grid, he 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, de la O said, reducing efficiency and output.

The country's top energy official 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," the minister said.

Neither Mexico nor Venezuela, once top suppliers of oil to Cuba, have sent fuel to the island since 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 to the island 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 United Nations 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."