Black smoke billows from a fire at the Nico Lopez oil refinery in Havana, Cuba [AFP]
The US government on Thursday announced another round of sanctions against Cuba, this time targeting its state-owned oil and gas company, Cuba Petróleo (Cupet). Secretary of State Marco Rubio accused the company of controlling assets that were “unlawfully expropriated from American owners years ago”.
In announcing the new measures, he also appeared to place much of the blame for the island’s ongoing energy challenges on Cuba’s leadership.
“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.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio in Washington, DC. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images North America/Getty Images)
He went on to allege 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”.
Cuba is already struggling under a decades-old US embargo and persistent fuel shortages. At the same time, Washington continues to push for changes to the island’s economic and political model.
The latest sanctions also come amid heightened military rhetoric from the United States.
Just this week, Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth visited the US Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay. During the tour on Wednesday, he again hinted at the possibility of military action, warning Cuba not to make the kind of “wrong decision” that “creates the kind of threat the United States may have to deal with”.
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