Cuba hit by second nationwide power outage in a week
The state utility said Friday’s blackout began before evening, adding to a run of island-wide failures this year as fuel supplies tighten.
By Lucas Ferreira · Science & Environment Writer
3 min read
Cuba suffered a nationwide blackout on Friday, the second island-wide power failure in less than a week, according to the state electricity company. The outage underscored the pressure on an ageing grid that Al Jazeera reported has been strained further by US restrictions on fuel supplies.
Union Electrica de Cuba, the state-owned utility that runs the electrical grid, said the failure began at 4:30pm local time, or 20:30 GMT. The utility did not give a cause for the blackout, according to Al Jazeera.
The outage followed a similar nationwide failure on Monday. Al Jazeera reported that Cuba has now had four island-wide blackouts since the start of the year, including two in March.
Power cuts are a recurring problem in Cuba, where much of the electricity system dates from the Cold War era, between 1960 and 1980, Al Jazeera reported. The strain has grown since January, when US President Donald Trump’s administration moved to cut off Cuba’s access to foreign oil, according to Al Jazeera.
The United States has maintained a broad trade embargo on Cuba since the 1960s. Al Jazeera reported that Trump, after returning to office for a second term, has sought to force political change on the communist-led island, whose government has long faced accusations from critics of human rights abuses and suppression of dissent.
According to Al Jazeera, Trump authorised a military operation on January 3 against Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, a socialist leader allied with Havana. The operation led to Maduro being taken to New York, where he remains imprisoned on drug- and weapons-related charges, Al Jazeera reported.
After Maduro’s removal, Trump said Venezuela would stop sending oil or money to Cuba, and his administration has controlled Venezuelan oil exports since then, according to Al Jazeera. On January 29, Trump signed an executive order saying Cuba “constitutes an unusual and extraordinary threat” to the United States and warned that countries supplying fuel to Cuba could face steep tariffs, Al Jazeera reported.
Only one Russian oil tanker has reached Cuba since those measures took effect, and that shipment arrived in March, according to Al Jazeera. The International Energy Agency said Cuba produced 40 percent of the oil it used as of 2023, leaving the rest to be supplied from abroad.
UN human rights officials have warned that fuel shortages could hurt civilians by disrupting services such as transport. In June, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk cited figures showing infant mortality had nearly doubled in recent months, according to Al Jazeera.
“The fuel restrictions imposed since early 2026 and recent tightening of extraterritorial sanctions, taken together, are directly harming Cubans, especially the most vulnerable,” Turk said in a statement. “Children are dying because doctors lack access to essential medical supplies and medicines. This is unacceptable.”
The Trump administration has rejected responsibility for Cuba’s power problems. “We’ve done nothing punitive against the Cuban regime,” US Secretary of State Marco Rubio told Al Jazeera in March, blaming the Cuban government’s management for the failures.
Before the fuel squeeze, Cuba had planned to reduce its dependence on fossil fuels by expanding solar power and other renewable energy sources, Al Jazeera reported. The country has sped up that shift with solar technology imported from China, though renewable energy accounted for about 18 percent of total energy use in 2022, with a target of nearly 25 percent by 2030.
This story draws on original reporting from Al Jazeera.