Cuban officials report an island-wide blackout as country struggles with energy crisis

Of­fi­cials in Cu­ba re­port­ed an is­land-wide black­out Mon­day in the coun­try of some 11 mil­lion peo­ple as its en­er­gy and eco­nom­ic crises deep­en. Cu­ba has blamed its woes on a U.S. en­er­gy block­ade af­ter Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump in Jan­u­ary warned of tar­iffs on any coun­try that sells or pro­vides oil to it.

The Min­istry of En­er­gy and Mines on X not­ed a “com­plete dis­con­nec­tion” of the coun­try’s elec­tri­cal sys­tem and said it was in­ves­ti­gat­ing.

Pres­i­dent Miguel Díaz-Canel on Fri­day said the is­land had not re­ceived oil ship­ments in more than three months and was op­er­at­ing on so­lar pow­er, nat­ur­al gas and ther­mo­elec­tric plants, and the gov­ern­ment has had to post­pone surg­eries for tens of thou­sands of peo­ple.

A mas­sive out­age over a week ago af­fect­ed the is­land’s west, leav­ing mil­lions with­out pow­er.

Crit­i­cal oil ship­ments from Venezuela were halt­ed af­ter the U.S. at­tacked the South Amer­i­can coun­try in ear­ly Jan­u­ary and ar­rest­ed its then-pres­i­dent, Nicolás Maduro.

While Cu­ba pro­duces 40% of its pe­tro­le­um and has been gen­er­at­ing its own pow­er, it hasn’t been suf­fi­cient to meet de­mand as its elec­tric grid con­tin­ues to crum­ble.

On Fri­day, Díaz-Canel con­firmed that Cu­ba was hold­ing talks with the U.S. gov­ern­ment as the prob­lems con­tin­ue to deep­en.