US oil blockade: How long before Cuba collapses? in Oil & Companies News 10/02/2026 For days, a cold weather front had brought polar air to Cuba, causing temperatures to drop below freezing on some parts of the island for the first time in recorded history. But the frosty air hasn’t been the only thing bearing down on Cuba from the north. The United States, after attacking Venezuela — Cuba’s closest ally — and abducting its leader Nicolas Maduro has effectively cut off Venezuelan oil supplies to Havana. And in late January, US President Donald Trump called Cuba “an unusual and extraordinary threat” to national security and threatened to impose tariffs on any state that supplied oil or oil products to the island nation. Cuban President Migual Diaz-Canel initially slammed the move as “fascist, criminal and genocidal.” He has since stated that his country was willing to talk with the US, but “without pressure or preconditions.” He has also warned that Cuba was “close to failing” and announced forthcoming rationing plans to address the energy crisis. Trump is harming us simple people’ “Trump is crazy, he wants to take away the very air that we breathe,” says Aleida, who runs a homestay in Havana and did not want to share her last name, like all private citizens DW spoke with. “And the other one is even more of a fanatic when it comes to Cuba.” She’s referring to Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state and son of Cuban migrants. He’s long been seen as a leading voice of “maximum pressure” toward Venezuela and Cuba to force regime change. “We can only wait and see what happens next,” Aleida says, her face drawn with concern. Rachel, a 21-year-old civil servant, feels a similar uncertainty: “Sometimes I think that [Trump] will attack us next, and sometimes I think he won’t let us drown, so he can make himself look like the good guy.” She adds that she expects day-to-day life to get more difficult moving forward. “Trump is harming us simple people, not the government,” says Ramon, a taxi driver in his mid-sixties whose main income is from tourism, which declined sharply in the past year. By now, gas can only be bought with foreign currency and after hours of waiting in line at dollar-only gas stations. The country is only able to produce about 40% of the energy it requires. Blackouts have become commonplace — they can last 10 to 15 hours and have even reached the capital, Havana. Bert Hoffmann, a leading researcher at Germany’s GIGA Institute for Latin American Studies, says that apart from that, life in Havana is running its regular course. “I’ve observed a widespread wait-and-see attitude. There’s a great normalization of crisis, a sort of keep calm and carry on,” he tells DW. “The blackouts have increased, fuel is in even shorter supply, but it’s been fairly gradual. There are still cars on the road.” He adds, however, that this appearance of normalcy is deceptive: The country has “no prospects” of getting oil into the country in the near future, he believes. A watershed moment in Caracas Hoffmann says that things have been different since January 3, the day when Venezuela ceased being Cuba’s main oil supplier. The island’s second-largest supplier, Mexico, also halted its planned oil shipments to Cuba in January. Hardly any oil shipments have reached the island since December. In January, Cuba appears to have purchased a one-off tanker shipment of oil, bought at spot prices. Departing from Lome, Togo, the shipment was supposed to arrive in ea