A Russian-flagged oil tanker has reached Cuban waters after US President Donald Trump allowed it to break his administration’s fuel blockade of the island nation as its energy crisis deepens.
There have been conflicting reports about the ship’s exact location. The Russian transport ministry said the Anatoly Kolodkin – a tanker with nearly 730,000 barrels of oil onboard – had arrived at the Matanzas port in Cuba on Monday, according to Russian state-run news agencies. But data from the ship tracking site MarineTraffic on Monday afternoon showed it off Cayo Guillermo, within Cuba’s territorial seas. It was moving west toward the port of Matanzas, where it is expected to arrive by Monday night or Tuesday morning.
Cuba’s midday state-run newscast showed the ship’s imminent arrival as the lead story.
Dmitry Peskov, the spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin, also said on Monday the ship had arrived in Cuba. Asked if the US agreed to let the tanker through, Peskov said: “As for the American side, I can only confirm that this issue was indeed raised in advance during contacts with our American counterparts.”
Washington has ratcheted up pressure on Cuba in recent months, cutting supplies from its main oil supplier Venezuela and threatening other providers with additional tariffs, as it billed Havana as “an extraordinary threat.”
The effective oil blockade has caused blackouts and trash to pile up in the capital, with hospitals struggling to host patients and keep operating theaters open due to the energy crunch.
Speaking aboard Air Force One Sunday, Trump confirmed a tanker was heading towards the Caribbean country.
“We have a tanker out there. We don’t mind having somebody get a boatload, because they have to survive,” he told reporters, when being asked about the vessel.
President Donald Trump has said that the United States will allow a Russian-flagged oil tanker to reach Cuba as the island faces an energy crisis amid a US blockade. CNN's Patrick Oppmann reports.
“If a country wants to send some oil into Cuba right now, I have no problem. I prefer letting it in, whether it’s Russia or anybody else, because the people need heat and cooling and all of the other things that you need,” the president added.
The White House said Monday that the Trump administration allowing the oil tanker to reach Cuba is “not a policy change.”
“There has not been a formal change in sanction policy. As the president said last night, we allowed this ship to reach Cuba in order to provide humanitarian needs to the Cuban people. These decisions are being made on a case-by-case basis,” press secretary Karoline Leavitt said at a press briefing.
A drop in the bucket
The amount of oil on the Russian-flagged tanker is only expected to offer limited relief and its impact won’t be felt for several weeks, experts said.
“Basically, it represents very little. There are people who attach great importance to it, but it has a very limited economic and humanitarian impact,” Cuban-American researcher Jorge Piñón, director for Latin America at the University of Texas Energy Program, told CNN.
Piñón explained that Cuba needs diesel more than crude oil, and the shipment arriving in Matanzas must still be transported in small tankers to a refinery in Havana for processing. “It’s an old Exxon refinery, built in the 1950s, and it’s inefficient. That will take 20 days,” he estimated.
Mexican researcher Ramsés Pech, an energy sector analyst, pointed out that crude oil must undergo evaluation before being processed. “It needs to be reconditioned. It’s not just a matter of ‘putting it in.’ It requires laboratory analysis to determine its quality and verify that it doesn’t contain water,” he told CNN.
Once refined, the fuel will be distributed according to an order of priorities established by the government.
Cuba, which has scarce domestic reserves, needs about 100,000 barrels of oil per day. It only covers about 40% of this with domestic production, and another small portion of its energy supply comes from solar panels.
“All that diesel will last about 10 to 15 days and that’s it,” Piñón said.
Pech, meanwhile, said that the refined diesel could last “about 15 to 30 days,” and Cuba “would then return to the same situation.”
The communist-run island stopped receiving oil from Venezuela, its main supplier, after the United States captured President Nicolás Maduro in January. Shipments from other countries, such as Mexico, were later cut off after the Trump administration threatened to impose additional tariffs on countries that supplied crude directly or indirectly.
The fuel shortage has increased the frequency and lengths of blackouts and led to severe gas shortages, soaring prices, and the deterioration of infrastructure in Cuba. In just the past month, the island has suffered several total power grid collapses that left Havana and other cities in the dark.
The oil shortage has also affected public services and food transportation, prompting rare protests in some cities, with citizens banging pots and pans and lighting bonfires in the darkness.
Last week, the Kremlin said it is in contact with the Cuban government to discuss possible aid options for the island, although it did not mention tankers with fuel en route to Cuba.
On Sunday, Trump dismissed suggestions that letting the tanker through helps Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“He loses one boatload of oil, that’s all it is,” Trump said. “If he wants to do that, and if other countries want to do it, doesn’t bother me much.”
CNN’s Patrick Oppmann, Rocío Muñoz‑Ledo, Michael Rios, Gonzalo Zegarra and Samantha Waldenberg contributed reporting