Mexico seeks to restart oil shipments to Cuba soon

Mexico may be trying to reopen one of Cuba’s last fuel lifelines, but the island’s power cuts, water failures and hospital strain mean any restart would buy time, not fix the crisis. Claudia Sheinbaum said Mexico wanted oil shipments to Cuba moving again soon, and she said the cargoes should flow through commercial and privately owned firms rather than state-owned companies.

That detail matters. Mexico became a key supplier after Venezuela shipments were cut off in early January, when Cuba’s fuel cushion collapsed. Later, after Donald Trump threatened tariffs on any country that provides or sells oil to Cuba, those Mexican deliveries were completely suspended. Since the Venezuela disruption, only one oil shipment has reached the island, a Russian tanker carrying 730,000 barrels, and Cuba used that up in roughly a month.

That is the scale of the problem: Cuba produces only about 40% of the petroleum it needs. When fuel runs short, the damage reaches far beyond gas stations and transport. The shortages have already triggered severe blackouts, cut work hours, slowed water pumping, forced surgeries to be suspended, and left food spoiling before it can be used. Nearly 3 million Cubans have faced water shortages every day, and the island’s water system has been operating with only 37% of the fuel it needs.

The strain is visible in daily life from Havana to Pinar del Río. Residents are living with unreliable electricity and running water, and hospitals have been forced to keep lifesaving equipment going under worsening conditions. The United Nations has warned that blackouts and fuel shortages are pushing the health system deeper into crisis, while Mexico has kept sending humanitarian aid even as the fuel picture has worsened.

Sheinbaum also tied the idea to Cuba’s newly approved free-market reforms, saying Mexican business owners are already on the island and could be part of a commercial pipeline. That makes the proposed restart look less like a grand political rescue than a practical workaround, one meant to keep fuel moving with less state exposure and less direct confrontation. But Cuba’s experience since January shows how fragile that patch would be: one tanker can matter for weeks, yet the island still burns through the relief faster than any single shipment can last.