Are Cuba’s 22-hour blackouts and a US oil blockade unrelated, as Marco Rubio said?

In a Spanish video message to the people of Cuba, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said he wanted to share "the truth" about their suffering and what the U.S. government could do to help.

"The reason you are forced to survive 22 hours a day without electricity is not due to an oil ‘blockade’ by the U.S.," Rubio said in a video posted on X on May 20 — Cuba’s Independence Day and also the day the U.S. charged former Cuban president Raúl Castro in the 1996 Brothers to the Rescue plane shootdown. 

"As you know, better than anyone, you have been suffering from blackouts for years," he said. "The real reason you don’t have electricity, fuel or food is because those who control your country have plundered billions of dollars, but nothing has been used to help the people."

Since the U.S. government’s January capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, the U.S. has ended oil shipments from Venezuela to Cuba, previously the island's main supplier. Cuba mainly relies on oil products for energy. President Donald Trump has threatened other countries with tariffs and sanctions if they sell fuel to Cuba, effectively blocking all oil imports into the country.

Cuba’s economic and energy crises are decades in the making, with the government’s centralized control and longstanding mismanagement making rolling blackouts common.

However, Cuban historians and foreign policy experts said the U.S. is playing a role in the current crisis and its embargo is exacerbating an already fraught situation.

"The length of the blackouts has gotten worse since the oil embargo was in place, so that is clearly, unquestionably, a major part of the problem," said William LeoGrande, an American University specialist in Latin American politics. "To claim blackouts are solely the (Cuban) government's fault is simply disingenuous."

The State Department pointed PolitiFact to Rubio’s May 21 statement that said Cuba had "major blackouts last year, and they were still getting free Venezuelan oil. They haven't spent a penny in fixing their energy production, their electrical grid. They don't spend any money on that stuff. They pocket it." 

Neglected electrical grid a key factor for blackouts

Cuba’s blackouts largely started in the early 1990s when the country lost support from the Soviet Union after its collapse, said Theodore Henken, a Baruch College sociologist and anthropologist who studies Cuba. 

Blackouts became less frequent in the early and mid-2000s when then-Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez began subsidizing oil shipments to Cuba. As Venezuela’s economy worsened in the 2010s, the country reduced its oil shipments to Cuba. By 2023, the shipments could not fully power the Cuban grid. 

Lillian Guerra, a University of Florida Cuban and Caribbean history professor who’s experienced several blackouts when visiting the country, said in 2025 blackouts started happening more frequently and lasting longer.

The power outages have increased in frequency and duration since the embargo began. For example, the country had three nationwide blackouts in March and since February, has had at least 28 days of blackouts lasting 24 hours, El País reported May 22.

Experts said Cuba’s blackouts are primarily caused by a collapsed electric grid that needs upgrades and repairs.

"So, while the U.S. oil blockade certainly aggravated this situation, it did not create it," Henken said. Cuba’s government in recent years prioritized building hotels, he said, which has "starved the country of funds for basic maintenance."

The country’s electric grid requires 110,000 barrels of oil a day and can produce 40,000 per day, El País reported. 

On May 13, the Cuban government said it was out of oil and diesel.

Cuba's government relied on the oil shipments from Venezuela and didn't provide for alternatives, Bert Hoffmann, a Latin America expert at the German Institute of Global and Area Studies, told PolitiFact. Hoffman said the country only began to seriously install solar capacity three years ago.

Has the U.S. oil embargo contributed to the crisis?

Experts say the U.S.’ actions helped push Cuba’s fragile system over the edge.

"While there have been frequent blackouts in the past, they now are on a very different scale," Hoffmann said. They generally weren’t for 22 hours a day, he said.

"The blackouts have gotten much worse since January," said LeoGrande, from American University. "Cuban officials have said that they are searching for someone to sell them oil but no one will because of the threat of U.S. sanctions."

After the U.S. choked off the Venezuelan-Cuba oil supply line in early January, Trump issued a Jan. 29 executive order that threatened tariffs on any nation that directly or indirectly supplied oil to Cuba. That forced Mexico, Cuba’s other major oil supplier, to halt shipments to the island.

Mexico President Claudia Sheinbaum has repeatedly said she would supply Cuba with oil as humanitarian aid, but can’t because of the U.S.’ serious economic threats, Hoffman said. 

By the end of January, Cuba’s oil imports fell to zero for the first time since 2015. The U.S. has so far allowed only one oil vessel — the Russian Anatoly Kolodkin in late March — to reach Cuba.

Since the embargo, Cuba’s power supply has entered an "unprecedented state," El País reported. Trump issued another executive order May 1 authorizing sanctions on any foreign company or person who provides financial, material or technological support to the Cuban government, affecting nearly all sectors of Cuba’s economy. United Nations human rights experts have characterized this move as "energy starvation." 

Cuba’s humanitarian crisis and electric grid failures have worsened since the U.S. blockade, with food shortages, hospitals postponing or canceling surgeries, and schools and businesses forced to close.

Our ruling

Rubio said, "The reason (people in Cuba) are forced to survive 22 hours a day without electricity is not due to an oil ‘blockade’ by the U.S."

Experts say the Cuban government mismanaged the country’s electric system and failed to invest in infrastructure or diversify its energy sources. 

But the U.S. government’s oil embargo, along with its threats of tariffs and sanctions to any country that sends fuel or does business with Cuba, has exacerbated the problem.

Rubio says the Cuban government is to blame, but both governments are contributing to the problem. We rate his statement Half True. 

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