Cuba’s communist Castro regime is seeking oil from Africa to offset the oil it is no longer getting from Venezuela’s socialist regime thanks to President Donald Trump’s campaign pressure, the independent outlet 14 y Medio reported on Monday.
Jorge Piñón, an energy expert at the University of Texas, detailed to 14 y Medio that the Mia Grace, a Marshall Islands-flagged oil tanker departed from Lomé, Togo, on Monday and will arrive in Havana on February 4.
Based on the ship’s 50,000 tons capacity and the draft observed on ship monitoring services, Piñón told 14 y Medio that, “It seems that it is not fully loaded.” The energy expert stressed that the quality of the cargo is not known with certainty, but he asserted that it could be diesel or fuel oil.
“Togo does not refine oil, but it exports refined oil and has extensive logistics and maritime transit infrastructure,” he explained, and estimated that the tanker could be carrying either 314,500 barrels of diesel or 280,500 barrels of fuel oil.
Cuba largely relies on fuel imports to operate its barely-functional power plants — all brought to a state of near-complete ruin after more than six decades of disastrous communist policies. The Cuban regime also receives oil from Mexico.
Piñón asserted that that the oil could have been a “cash purchase” by Cubametales, the Cuban state-owned company that handles oil imports and exports, through an “European intermediary.” The United States, during President Trump’s first temp, sanctioned Cubamentales in 2019 for importing oil from Venezuela in exchange of providing now-deposed dictator Nicolás Maduro with defense, intelligence, and security assistance.
The upcoming arrival of the vessel to Havana, 14 y Medio said, “shows how, in the face of pressure from the United States following the capture of Nicolás Maduro over Venezuela’s oil, Cuba’s main fuel supplier for the pas 25 years, Cuba is trying to find supplies elsewhere, in this case, Africa.”
Last week, President Trump announced that Cuba is being cut off from oil and money, and urged the communist Castro regime, which has been in power for over six decades, to make a deal.
“THERE WILL BE NO MORE OIL OR MONEY GOING TO CUBA – ZERO! I strongly suggest they make a deal, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE. Thank you for your attention to this matter,” President Trump wrote in a Truth Social post .
On December, roughly a month before President Trump announced that Cuba would be cut off from oil and money, the United States seized a Cuba-bound oil tanker as it was sailing off the coast of Venezuela.
Hours after the United States’ law enforcement operation in Caracas that resulted in the arrest of Nicolás Maduro and his Wife Cilia Flores, the Castro regime confirmed that 32 Cuban military officials died defending Maduro — a revelation that debunked years of both allied regimes repeatedly denying that the Cuban military was operating in Venezuela. The remains of the 32 officials arrived inside small boxes to Havana last week, raising questions regarding what happened to the soldiers.
