Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez Paria rejected the claim by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio that “there is no such thing as an oil blockade“ against the island.
“Cuba was getting free oil from Venezuela – they were giving them a lot of free oil. They were taking, for example, 60 percent of that oil and reselling it for money. It wasn't even beneficial to the population”, Rubio said.
Paria recalled that in January of this year, President Donald Trump signed an executive order threatening additional tariffs on goods from countries supplying oil to Cuba. According to the Cuban foreign minister, only one tanker with fuel has arrived on the island in four months.
“All our suppliers are being threatened, which is a violation of the principles of free trade and freedom of navigation“, he stressed. The minister accused the secretary of state of lying.
“Their economic model is not working. And the people in power cannot fix it. And the reason they cannot fix it is not just because they are communists - that is bad enough - but because they are incompetent communists. The only thing worse than a communist is an incompetent communist“, Rubio also said.
The island produces only 40% of the fuel needed to run its economy (about 30,000 barrels of oil per day, compared to a demand of 110,000 barrels). Cuba has already experienced several complete power outages.
In late March, the Russian tanker "Anatoly Kolodkin" delivered 100,000 tons of oil to Cuba. Trump said he would not mind if any country, including Russia, sent oil there, as residents need "heating, cooling and everything else they need". The island's energy minister, Vicente de la O'Levy, later said that Cuba would have a fuel shortage just from the Russian tanker arriving.