U.S. slaps sanctions against Cuban oil and gas company as tensions rise

The U.S. gov­ern­ment on Thurs­day an­nounced sanc­tions against Cu­ba’s state-owned oil and gas com­pa­ny in a move some ex­perts say will on­ly deep­en the is­land’s crises and hit vul­ner­a­ble Cubans the hard­est.

U.S. Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio as­sert­ed that key as­sets of the com­pa­ny, known as Cu­pet, were “un­law­ful­ly ex­pro­pri­at­ed from Amer­i­can own­ers years ago.”

He al­so ac­cused Cu­ba’s gov­ern­ment of weapon­is­ing en­er­gy.

“While the Cuban peo­ple have suf­fered fu­el short­ages and black­outs be­cause of decades of un­der-in­vest­ment in crit­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture, Cu­ba’s Com­mu­nist lead­ers have di­vert­ed en­er­gy re­sources to line their own pock­ets,” Ru­bio said in a state­ment.

He fur­ther not­ed, with­out pro­vid­ing ev­i­dence, that Cuban of­fi­cials “re­sell count­less bar­rels of scarce en­er­gy on the sec­ondary mar­ket, hoard­ing en­er­gy sup­plies for its mil­i­tary, in­tel­li­gence and re­pres­sive forces, and ra­tioning en­er­gy as a tool of so­cial con­trol.”

The Cuban gov­ern­ment did not im­me­di­ate­ly re­spond to a mes­sage seek­ing com­ment. It has pre­vi­ous­ly said that sanc­tions pun­ish all Cubans and are aimed at stran­gling the econ­o­my to desta­bilise both the gov­ern­ment and its peo­ple.

Cu­pet’s fu­el sales to the pub­lic are al­most non-ex­is­tent and are cur­rent­ly ra­tioned.

William LeoGrande, an ex­pert on Cu­ba at the Amer­i­can Uni­ver­si­ty in the Unit­ed States, said the lat­est U.S. mea­sure seems like an ef­fort to block any ma­jor oil ship­ments.

“It ap­pears that they’re all in on stran­gling the Cuban econ­o­my,” he said. “Their pol­i­cy is a con­tra­dic­tion. They claim they don’t want to cre­ate a hu­man­i­tar­i­an cri­sis, al­though that’s ex­act­ly what they’re do­ing.”

Ri­car­do Her­rero, a Cuban econ­o­mist based in the U.S. and ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of the Cu­ba Study Group, a non-par­ti­san or­gan­i­sa­tion based in Wash­ing­ton, D.C., said he was “gen­uine­ly vexed” by the move.

“How are pri­vate im­porters sup­posed to store diesel and get it in­to ve­hi­cles with­out us­ing CU­PET fa­cil­i­ties?,” he wrote on X. “This un­der­mines what, un­til this morn­ing, had been a hu­man­i­tar­i­an pri­or­i­ty for the US. Ei­ther some­thing much big­ger is afoot, or we’ve en­tered the ‘in­dis­crim­i­nate cru­el­ty’ phase of this pol­i­cy.”

It’s un­clear whether Cu­pet has any as­sets in the U.S., al­though it’s un­like­ly, LeoGrande said.

He said he could un­der­stand the log­ic of the mea­sure to de­cen­tralise the gov­ern­ment and strength­en and em­pow­er the pri­vate sec­tor by en­abling it to sell gaso­line to state en­ter­pris­es, or force those en­ter­pris­es to move to­ward pri­vati­sa­tion so they could be oil re­cip­i­ents.

“Now, the Cubans are not go­ing to pri­va­tise Cu­pet in the hope that might work and that some­how the U.S. might al­low oil to go through in that way,” LeoGrande said.

He not­ed that most pri­vate busi­ness­es in Cu­ba are small and don’t have the in­fra­struc­ture to land an oil tanker, un­load the prod­uct and dis­trib­ute it.

“They’re run­ning a huge risk of trig­ger­ing mass mi­gra­tion,” he said of the U.S. gov­ern­ment.

Thurs­day’s an­nounce­ment comes al­most a week af­ter the U.S. gov­ern­ment sanc­tioned Cuban Pres­i­dent Miguel Díaz-Canel and oth­er of­fi­cials, as well as sev­er­al in­sti­tu­tions.

Ru­bio said in a state­ment that all prop­er­ty or in­ter­ests of Cu­pet lo­cat­ed in the U.S. or in pos­ses­sion or con­trol of U.S. peo­ple are blocked.

“Pres­i­dent Trump wants a new fu­ture for the Cuban peo­ple with greater eco­nom­ic and po­lit­i­cal free­dom and op­por­tu­ni­ty,” Ru­bio wrote on X. “Un­til then, we will con­tin­ue to tar­get the Com­mu­nist regime’s abil­i­ty to lever­age its en­er­gy trade to fur­ther its cor­rupt agen­da and vi­o­lent­ly re­press the Cuban peo­ple.”

Cu­ba is al­ready strug­gling un­der a decades-old em­bar­go and a lack of pe­tro­le­um as the U.S. keeps push­ing for a change in its eco­nom­ic and po­lit­i­cal mod­el.

Pow­er out­ages — al­ready com­mon giv­en the eco­nom­ic and en­er­getic cri­sis grip­ping the is­land for the past five years — have on­ly in­ten­si­fied since U.S. Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump threat­ened tar­iffs in late Jan­u­ary on any coun­try that sells or pro­vides oil to Cu­ba.

Both coun­tries have ac­knowl­edged that they’ve held talks, but the scope of them is un­known.

Mean­while, Trump has been threat­en­ing mil­i­tary ac­tion in Cu­ba ever since the U.S. mil­i­tary in­vad­ed Venezuela and ar­rest­ed for­mer Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro.

Last Thurs­day, Trump said Cu­ba has “sort of col­lapsed” and said “we’re go­ing to han­dle that as soon as we’ve fin­ished” mil­i­tary op­er­a­tions in Iran. —SAN JUAN, Puer­to Ri­co (AP)

_________

Sto­ry by DÁNI­CA CO­TO | As­so­ci­at­ed Press