The United States government announced sanctions on Thursday against Cuba's state-owned oil and gas company, Cupet, escalating tensions between Washington and Havana. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio accused the company of holding assets that were “unlawfully expropriated from American owners years ago” and claimed that Cuba's leadership is “weaponising energy” against its own population.
“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. He further alleged, without providing evidence, 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.”
The Cuban government did not immediately respond to a request for comment. It has previously argued that US sanctions punish all Cubans and are designed to strangle the economy in order to destabilise both the government and its people. Cupet's fuel sales to the public are already almost non-existent and are currently rationed.
Humanitarian Concerns and Expert Reactions
Ricardo Herrero, a Cuban economist based in the United States and executive director of the nonpartisan Cuba Study Group in Washington, expressed frustration with 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 come less than a week after the US government sanctioned Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel and other officials, as well as several institutions. Rubio stated that all property or interests of Cupet located in the US or in the possession or control of US persons 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.”
Cuba is already struggling under a decades-old US embargo and a severe lack of petroleum. Power outages, already common due to the economic and energy crisis gripping the island for the past five years, have intensified since Trump threatened tariffs in late January on any country that sells or provides oil to Cuba. Both countries have acknowledged holding talks, but the scope of those discussions remains unknown.
Meanwhile, Trump has been threatening military action in Cuba ever since the US military invaded Venezuela and arrested former President Nicolás Maduro. Last Thursday, Trump said Cuba has “sort of collapsed” and added that “we're going to handle that as soon as we've finished” military operations in Iran.
For European observers, the situation in Cuba highlights the broader challenges of energy security and geopolitical leverage. The EU has its own energy concerns, from managing the fallout of the Russian war in Ukraine to diversifying supply routes. The energy crisis in Europe has prompted member states like Portugal to invoke EU budget safeguard clauses, while projects such as the Baltic offshore wind farms planned by Poland and Germany aim to counter Russian energy threats. The US sanctions on Cuba, however, risk further complicating humanitarian access to fuel on the island, a concern that resonates with European principles of civilian protection.
