Blackout in Cuba leaves millions without power amid US oil chokehold

A blackout has hit the western half of Cuba, leaving millions of people in Havana and beyond without power in the latest outage to affect an island struggling with dwindling oil reserves and facing increasing pressure from Washington.

Cuba has experienced a series of major blackouts in recent years, even before the US cut off oil shipments to the Caribbean’s largest island. Cuba’s government has attributed its economic crisis to decades of economic sanctions from the US.

A more recent scarcity of oil from Venezuela and Mexico due to US pressure has worsened existing shortages.

The state electricity entity UNE said that it was working to restore services, and that the blackout affected the island from the central province of Camagüey to Pinar del Rio in the far west.

The Felton 1 thermoelectric power plant, located in Holguín province in eastern Cuba, remains online and recovery protocols have been activated, Cuba’s energy ministry said.

It is the second such outage to affect Cuba’s western region in the past three months.

The cause of Wednesday’s outage was not immediately clear, but Cuba’s frail and antiquated power-generation system has seen a string of major failures over recent years.

Hours-long rolling blackouts have been the norm for months, with more than half of the country experiencing power cuts during peak hours.

Venezuela, Cuba’s top oil supplier, has not sent shipments since December. Its president, Nicolás Maduro, was captured in a US attack on its capital in early January, after which the US has controlled the country’s oil exports.

Mexico said it would halt supplies after the US threatened tariffs on countries supplying Cuba with oil.

The power cuts have caused the government to ration key services.