Cuba’s Electrical Grid Collapses After Nation’s Oil Imports Dwindle

Cuba’s national electric grid has collapsed leaving some 10 million people on the island nation without power.

CNN’s Brianna Keilar reported Monday, “Cuba’s electrical grid has suffered a complete and total collapse. This is according to the country’s power operator.”

“It’s the first nationwide blackout since the U.S. effectively shut off the flow of oil to Cuba,” Keilar reported.

The “U.S.-imposed oil blockade…has crippled the island’s already obsolete generation system,” Reuters reported.

“Grid operator UNE said on social media it is investigating the causes ​of the blackout, the latest in a series of widespread outages that last for hours ​or days and that this weekend sparked a rare violent protest in ⁠the communist-run country,” Reuters said.

The report continued, “Cuba ‌has ⁠received only two small vessels carrying oil imports this year,” from Mexico and Jamaica. “Venezuela, once Cuba’s main oil supplier, has sent no fuel to the island this year.”

“Venezuela’s state company PDVSA last month loaded gasoline in ​a tanker that it had previously used to transport fuel to Cuba, ​but the ⁠vessel has not left Venezuelan waters, PDVSA documents and tanker monitoring data showed,” Reuters said.

U.S. President Donald Trump removed Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro from power in January and has been working in tandem with his replacement Delcy Eloína Rodríguez Gómez.

Trump has threatened to “take over” Cuba next.

“It may be a friendly takeover, it may not be a friendly takeover,” Trump said earlier this month. “It wouldn’t matter because they’re really down to, as they say , fumes. They have no energy, they have no money. They’re in deep trouble on a humanitarian basis,” Trump continued. “And we don’t want to see that. But they were very very bad to a lot of people, as you know.”

Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel has confirmed that his government is currently engaged in talks with the United States over the oil and energy blockade, first initiated by President John F. Kennedy in the 1960s.

Watch the clip above via CNN.

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