Cuba’s national electric grid collapsed on Monday, the nation’s grid operator said, leaving about 10 million people without power amid a US-imposed oil blockade that has crippled the already obsolete generation system.
Grid operator UNE on social media said that it is investigating the causes of the blackout, the latest in a series of widespread outages that last for hours or days and that this weekend sparked a rare violent protest in the communist-run nation.
Officials ruled out a major power plant failure, but had still not pinpointed the root cause of the grid collapse, suggesting a problem with transmission.
Photo: Reuters
Officials said that they had begun restoring power to small clusters of circuits, or microsystems, across the nation, an early, but necessary first step in bringing the full grid back online.
The US has ratcheted up pressure this year on long-time foe Cuba since capturing former Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro — Cuba’s most important foreign benefactor — in January.
US President Donald Trump cut off Venezuelan oil shipments to Cuba and threatened to slap tariffs on any nation that sells oil to Cuba, strangling the Caribbean island’s already antiquated grid.
Cuba on Friday last week said that it has entered into talks with the US with the hope of defusing the crisis. Trump has said that Cuba is on the verge of collapse and is eager to make a deal with the US.
Cubans have grown accustomed to power outages, whether tied to the oil supply shortfalls or systemic failures in the grid, which can also be the result of depressed power generation.
“No, the news didn’t surprise me,” said Havana resident Dayana Machin, 26, adding that all Cubans were scrambling now to find alternatives to grid-provided electricity. “We’re getting used to living like this.”
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 in January at Havana from Mexico, which was a regular supplier to the nation until that time. The second vessel, from Jamaica, discharged liquefied petroleum gas last month.
Venezuela, once Cuba’s main oil supplier, has sent no fuel to the nation this year.
Venezuelan state firm 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 analyzed by TankerTrackers.com.
The ports of Havana and Cienfuegos also have not had import activity in more than a month, it added.
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