HAVANA, July 16 (Xinhua) -- Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez said that the power outage, which occurred for the third time across the country in less than two weeks, was caused by the US's economic and energy pressure.
In his post on the social media platform
Describing this as a "genocidal oil blockade", Rodriguez said that Washington was not satisfied with this and targeted and imposed sanctions on Cuban and foreign companies connected to this strategically important sector.
Rodriguez stated that US officials, especially Secretary of State Marco Rubio, "do not care about the difficulties experienced by thousands of families, hundreds of hospitals being left without electricity, or food spoiling due to lack of refrigeration."
"Their sole purpose is to destroy the revolution, its achievements and its history. For this purpose, they are collectively punishing the Cuban people," said Rodriguez.
According to the state-owned National Electricity Association, which operates Cuba's power grid, the National Electricity System was restarted at 07:00 on Wednesday after the outage on Tuesday. There were power outages across the country on July 6 and 10.
The energy crisis in Cuba deepened further after the United States issued a decree allowing sanctions to be imposed on countries exporting fuel to the island at the beginning of 2026.
In the last six months, 100,000 tons of crude oil were shipped to Cuba from Russia. However, national authorities state that approximately eight tanker loads of fuel are needed per month for the country's energy system to operate normally.
The inadequacy in fuel supply, combined with the outdated electricity infrastructure based on thermoelectric power plants that have been in service for many years and, according to official sources, have not been properly maintained, further aggravates the energy crisis.