The United States government imposed sanctions Thursday on Cuba’s government-owned petroleum company, a decision anticipated to worsen already strained relations between the two nations.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio claimed that major assets belonging to the company, called Cupet, were “unlawfully expropriated from American owners years ago.”
Rubio also charged Cuba’s government with weaponizing energy resources.
“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.
Without offering proof, he additionally claimed 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.”
Cuban authorities did not immediately provide a response to requests for comment. The government has previously stated that sanctions harm all Cubans and are designed to cripple the economy in order to destabilize both leadership and citizens.
Public fuel sales by Cupet are nearly nonexistent and currently subject to rationing.
Ricardo Herrero, a Cuban economist based in the U.S. and executive director of the Cuba Study Group, a nonpartisan organization 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.”
The sanctions announcement occurred nearly one week following U.S. government sanctions against Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel and other officials, along with multiple institutions.
According to Rubio’s statement, any property or interests belonging to Cupet that are located in the U.S. or under the possession or control of U.S. individuals are now 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.”
The island nation continues to face difficulties under a longstanding embargo and petroleum shortages as the U.S. maintains pressure for changes to Cuba’s economic and political systems.
Electrical blackouts — already frequent due to the economic and energy crisis affecting the island over the past five years — have worsened since U.S. President Donald Trump threatened tariffs in late January against any nation that sells or supplies oil to Cuba.
Officials from both nations have confirmed they have conducted discussions, though the extent of these conversations remains unclear.
Trump has been making threats of military intervention in Cuba following the U.S. military’s invasion of Venezuela and arrest of former President Nicolás Maduro.
Last Thursday, Trump described Cuba as having “sort of collapsed” and stated “we’re going to handle that as soon as we’ve finished” military operations in Iran.
