US Slaps Sanctions on Cuban Oil, Gas Co06/12 06:25

   

   SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) -- The U.S. government on Thursday announced 
sanctions against Cuba's state-owned oil and gas company in a move some experts 
say will only deepen the island's crises and hit vulnerable Cubans the hardest.

   U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio asserted that key assets of the company, 
known as Cupet, were "unlawfully expropriated from American owners years ago."

   He also accused Cuba's government of weaponizing energy.

   "While the Cuban people have suffered fuel shortages and blackouts because 
of decades of under-investment in critical infrastructure, Cuba's Communist 
leaders have diverted energy resources to line their own pockets," Rubio said 
in a statement.

   He further noted, without providing evidence, that Cuban officials "resell 
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."

   Bruno Rodrguez, Cuba's foreign affairs minister, pushed back against 
Rubio's comments in a post on X.

   "The US Secretary of State, driven by ambitions of conquest, presidential 
aspirations, and the vindictive sentiments of the elitist clique that propelled 
his political career, is now further tightening the economic and energy 
blockade against Cuba," he wrote. "To justify this, he doesn't resort to 
excuses prepared by his State Department, but rather to the usual vulgar lies, 
the most aggressive, ignorant, and rabid rhetoric among Cuba's enemies."

   Cuba's government has previously said that sanctions punish all Cubans and 
are aimed at strangling the economy to destabilize both the government and its 
people.

   Cupet's fuel sales to the public are almost nonexistent and are currently 
rationed.

   William LeoGrande, an expert on Cuba at the American University in the 
United States, said the latest U.S. measure seems like an effort to block any 
major oil shipments.

   "It appears that they're all in on strangling the Cuban economy," he said. 
"Their policy is a contradiction. They claim they don't want to create a 
humanitarian crisis, although that's exactly what they're doing."

   'Risk of triggering mass migration'

   Ricardo Herrero, a Cuban economist based in the U.S. and executive director 
of the Cuba Study Group, a nonpartisan organization based in Washington, D.C., 
said he was "genuinely vexed" by the move.

   "How are private importers supposed to store diesel and get it into vehicles 
without using CUPET facilities?," he wrote on X. "This undermines what, until 
this morning, had been a humanitarian priority for the US. Either something 
much bigger is afoot, or we've entered the 'indiscriminate cruelty' phase of 
this policy."

   It's unclear whether Cupet has any assets in the U.S., although it's 
unlikely, LeoGrande said.

   He said he could understand the logic of the measure to decentralize the 
government and strengthen and empower the private sector by enabling it to sell 
gasoline to state enterprises, or force those enterprises to move toward 
privatization so they could be oil recipients.

   "Now, the Cubans are not going to privatize Cupet in the hope that might 
work and that somehow the U.S. might allow oil to go through in that way," 
LeoGrande said.

   He noted that most private businesses in Cuba are small and don't have the 
infrastructure to land an oil tanker, unload the product and distribute it.

   "They're running a huge risk of triggering mass migration," he said of the 
U.S. government.

   Thursday's announcement comes almost a week after the U.S. government 
sanctioned Cuban President Miguel Daz-Canel and other officials, as well as 
several institutions.

   Rubio said in a statement that all property or interests of Cupet located in 
the U.S. or in possession or control of U.S. people are blocked.

   " President Trump wants a new future for the Cuban people with greater 
economic and political freedom and opportunity," Rubio wrote on X. "Until then, 
we will continue to target the Communist regime's ability to leverage its 
energy trade to further its corrupt agenda and violently repress the Cuban 
people."

   Cuba is already struggling under a decades-old embargo and a lack of 
petroleum as the U.S. keeps pushing for a change in its economic and political 
model.

   Power outages -- already common given the economic and energetic crisis 
gripping the island for the past five years -- have only intensified since U.S. 
President Donald Trump threatened tariffs in late January on any country that 
sells or provides oil to Cuba.

   Both countries have acknowledged that they've held talks, but the scope of 
them is unknown.

   Meanwhile, Trump has been threatening military action in Cuba ever since the 
U.S. military invaded Venezuela and arrested former President Nicols Maduro.

   Last Thursday, Trump said Cuba has "sort of collapsed" and said "we're going 
to handle that as soon as we've finished" military operations in Iran.