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(Bloomberg) — The US sanctioned Cuba’s state oil and gas company, piling more pressure on the communist-run nation in the middle of a dire energy crisis.
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Unión Cuba-Petróleo, known as Cupet, was added to the Treasury Department’s blacklist on Thursday, according to updated guidance from the Office of Foreign Assets Control.
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Cupet pumps the roughly 400,000 barrels per day of oil that Cuba produces itself, which covers only two fifths of the island’s needs. It’s also responsible for the nation’s refineries, fuel distribution and much of its energy infrastructure.
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“Like every resource on the island, energy has long been weaponized by Cuba’s communist government as a tool of both repression and self-serving regime kleptocracy,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement, adding that Cupet had “unlawfully expropriated” US-owned assets years ago.
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He accused Cuba’s leadership of personal enrichment by “reselling countless barrels of scarce energy on the secondary market, hoarding energy supplies for its military, intelligence and repressive forces, and rationing energy as a tool of social control.”
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After capturing Cuba’s principal ally in Venezuela at the start of the year and cutting off its supply of subsidized oil, President Donald Trump’s administration has imposed a de facto oil blockade on the island of 10 million people. Aside from one Russian tanker that was waived through, Cuba hasn’t receive a major fuel delivery since then, prompting many industries and much of daily life to grind to a halt.
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Hoping to end nearly seven decades of one-party rule, Trump’s team has steadily increased sanctions, unveiling murder charges against revolutionary leader Raúl Castro last month and adding President Miguel Díaz-Canel to the same Treasury blacklist as Cupet last week.
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