On Thursday, the United States government unveiled a fresh round of economic restrictions targeting Cuba, with the island nation’s state-owned oil and gas conglomerate, Cuba Petróleo (Cupet), bearing the brunt of the new measures. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio made the announcement, claiming the company controls assets that were illegally seized from U.S. property owners decades ago.
Beyond the sanctions designation, Rubio placed full responsibility for Cuba’s ongoing national energy crisis squarely on the country’s ruling leadership. He argued that while ordinary Cuban citizens have endured crippling fuel shortages and widespread power outages driven by years of underinvestment in critical energy infrastructure, the island’s communist leadership has siphoned off energy resources for personal gain.
“Cuban officials resell thousands of barrels of this already scarce fuel on unregulated secondary markets, hoard the majority of available energy supplies for the country’s military, intelligence services and repressive state apparatus, and deliberately ration access to power as a tool to enforce social control over the population,” Rubio alleged during the announcement.
This latest action comes as Cuba continues to grapple with the cumulative economic pressure of a more than 60-year U.S. trade embargo that has gutted the country’s ability to import essential goods, including fuel. Washington has long maintained pressure on Havana to overhaul its existing economic and political systems, and the new sanctions mark a further escalation of that long-running campaign.
The penalties also arrive alongside a sharp uptick in aggressive military rhetoric from U.S. officials. Just one day before the sanctions announcement, U.S. Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth conducted an official visit to the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, a facility that has remained a point of contention between the two nations for decades. During his tour of the base, Hegseth did not rule out the possibility of direct U.S. military action against Cuba, issuing a stark warning to Havana against making what he called a “wrong decision” that would create a threat the U.S. would be forced to respond to militarily.