In a Reuters report on Díaz-Canel’s televised remarks, the Cuban leader said the contacts were aimed at finding solutions through dialogue and remained in an early stage, while stressing that any progress would have to rest on equality, sovereignty and respect for each country’s political system.
Cuba energy crisis deepens as blackouts, rationing and diplomacy converge
In the official Granma account of the appearance, Díaz-Canel said no fuel had entered Cuba for three months and that diesel and fuel-oil deliveries had been systematically blocked. Reuters reported the shortages have left the grid increasingly unstable and pushed outages above 12 hours a day across much of Havana.
The immediate trigger for the latest spiral was a March 5 report on the nationwide blackout and partial grid restoration, which said an unexpected outage at the Antonio Guiteras thermoelectric plant hit a system already weakened by low fuel availability. At the time, officials said only about 590 megawatts were online, compared with a normal effective capacity of just under 2,000 megawatts.
Havana had already moved into damage-control mode. A Reuters dispatch on the government’s February rationing plan said authorities were prioritizing fuel for health care, agriculture, education, water supply, defense, ports and export sectors, while shifting some secondary and higher education to hybrid formats. Even with those measures, pressure has spilled into public view: more than 20 University of Havana students staged a rare sit-in this week over class disruptions tied to power and internet shortages.
AP’s account of Friday’s announcement added that Díaz-Canel said Cuba produces about 40% of the petroleum it uses but still cannot meet demand without imports. He said shortages have hit transportation, communications and hospitals, forcing the postponement of tens of thousands of surgeries — proof, as he put it, that “the impact is tremendous.” AP also reported U.S. officials said Secretary of State Marco Rubio met late last month with Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro, the grandson of former Cuban leader Raúl Castro.
How the Cuba energy crisis reached this point
The current emergency fits a longer pattern. Reuters chronicled the October 2024 collapse of the national grid, then reported December 2024 fuel shortages that shuttered gas stations, and later detailed a March 2025 plan to install 50 solar parks as Havana searched for structural relief. Taken together, that timeline shows a rolling crisis in which aging infrastructure, shrinking fuel access and delayed alternatives kept compounding each other.
For now, Cuba says it is trying to buy time through diplomacy, tighter rationing, more domestic crude and gas output, and a faster solar build-out. Those moves may ease part of the pressure, but the government’s own message on Friday was that imported oil remains indispensable to stabilizing daily life, keeping industry running and shortening blackouts in the near term.
