Cuba restores power after 29-hour blackout amid US oil embargo | Business and financial news

Cuba’s national power grid comes back on after 10 million people were plunged into darkness overnight.

Cuba has reconnected its power grid and brought its largest oil-fired power plant online, energy officials said, ending a nationwide blackout that lasted more than 29 hours amid a United States move to cut off the island’s energy supply.

The Caribbean island’s national power grid was fully back online by 6:11 pm (22:11 GMT) on Tuesday, after 10 million people in the country were plunged into darkness overnight. However, due to insufficient power generation, power shortage may continue, officials said.

In addition to cutting oil sales to Cuba, US President Donald Trump has stepped up his rhetoric against the communist-run island, saying on Monday he could do whatever he wanted with the country.

A US State Department official blamed the Cuban government for the grid collapse, calling the blackouts “a symptom of the incompetence of a failed administration.”

Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel criticized the “almost daily public threats against Cuba” in Washington.

“They intend to announce plans and takeover of the country, its resources, its assets and the economy that they want to suffocate to force us to surrender,” Diaz-Canel wrote on social media Tuesday night, shortly after the nationwide return to power.

Cuba has not yet said what caused Monday’s nationwide grid failure, the first outage since the US cut off the island’s oil supply from Venezuela and threatened to impose tariffs on countries that ship fuel to the nation.

By Tuesday afternoon, grid workers had successfully fired up the Antonio Guiteras power plant, a decades-old behemoth that underpins the country’s power grid.

Daily darkness

Hampered by dire fuel shortages and antiquated power plants, power generation is still too low to meet demand, providing scant relief for Cubans already exhausted by months of blackouts.

Most Cubans, including in the capital Havana, were seeing 16 or more hours of blackouts every day before the recent grid collapse.

“It affects every aspect of our lives,” said Havana resident Carlos Montes de Oca, adding that the shutdowns have disrupted simple necessities such as food and water supplies. “All we can do is sit, wait, read a book… otherwise the stress will get to you.”

Much of Cuba remained cloudy Monday afternoon as a cold front neared the island, casting shadows over a third or so of the solar parks’ daytime output.

Cuba has received only two small vessels carrying oil imports this year, according to LSEG ship tracking data seen by Reuters on Monday. On Tuesday, a Hong Kong-flagged tanker carrying fuel to Cuba resumed navigation in the Atlantic Ocean after suspending its course weeks ago, data showed.

Cuba and the US have opened talks aimed at easing the crisis, the most intense since Fidel Castro forced the US ally from power on the island in 1959.

Neither side has provided details of ongoing negotiations, although Trump has portrayed Cuba as desperate to strike a deal.

Cubans, no strangers to hardship, saw little choice but to remain calm.

“We still don’t have power in my house,” said Juana Perez, a resident of Havana. “But we take it for granted, as we Cubans always do.”