Last week, a tanker linked to Cuba burned fuel for five days to get to the port in Curaçao but then left without cargo, according to ship-tracking data. Three days later, the US Coast Guard intercepted a tanker full of Colombian fuel oil en route to Cuba that had gotten within 70 miles of the island, the data showed.
While President Trump has pledged to halt any oil headed to Cuba, the Trump administration has stopped short of calling its policy a blockade.
But it is functioning as one.
Trump signed an executive order last month threatening to impose tariffs on countries that provide oil to Cuba. That has succeeded at scaring other nations, including Mexico, into sitting on the sidelines despite their desire to help Cuba.
At the same time, the largest US military presence in the Caribbean in decades is policing the waters around the island, fresh off its work blocking oil shipments to and from Venezuela before the US capture of the country’s leader, Nicolás Maduro, last month.
And, according to a US official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss operational matters, the Coast Guard’s interception of the tanker headed to Cuba last week was part of a blockade that the Trump administration has not yet announced.
“Among us longtime Cuba watchers, we’ve always resisted people using the word blockade,” said Fulton Armstrong, the former lead Latin America analyst for the CIA, who has been studying Cuba since 1984. “But it is indeed a blockade.”
The White House declined to comment. A Cuban government spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.
The United Nations has criticized the US policy as a violation of international law that has exacerbated the suffering of Cuba’s roughly 10 million residents. It also appears to have the island’s Communist government teetering on edge.
“Since the Cuban missile crisis, this is the biggest step,” Armstrong said, referring to the 13-day confrontation in 1962 when the US Navy encircled Cuba. “And the Cubans will have to make a decision of whether to surrender.”
The US government called its 1962 policy a “quarantine” to avoid using the word “blockade,” which legally could be interpreted as an act of war. The Trump administration has also avoided using the word “blockade.”
President Miguel Díaz-Canel of Cuba has said he was open to negotiating with Washington, while promising to find ways around the blockade. “We are making every effort so that the country can once again have fuel,” he told reporters this month. “We have to do very hard, very creative and very intelligent work to overcome all these obstacles.”
To understand whether fuel was still flowing to the island, the Times conducted interviews and analyzed satellite images, port records, and data broadcast from a series of ships connected to Cuba.
The analysis showed that oil-tanker traffic to and from the island has nearly stopped. Yet it also showed that several ships did appear to venture out in search of fuel. All were stymied by Trump’s policies.
In Cuba, people are struggling with frequent blackouts, shortages of gasoline and cooking gas, and dwindling supplies of diesel that power the nation’s water pumps. Trash is piling up, food prices are soaring, schools are canceling classes, and hospitals are suspending surgeries.
Some humanitarian aid is still arriving in the country, including from the United States. The US government said this month it would send $6 million in aid to Cuba, including prepackaged food, via the Catholic Church.
Still, the US embargo on Cuba has deeply complicated life for its residents for more than six decades, and now the blockade of oil tankers is plunging the island into one of its darkest moments.
Jorge Piñón, a former oil executive who runs a team at the University of Texas at Austin tracking Cuba’s oil, said the team estimates that the country’s fuel reserves could be depleted by mid-March, triggering social unrest that could threaten the government. Nearly all of Cuba’s energy runs on oil and oil products.
And Cuba appears to have few lifelines left.
Its once dominant supplier, Venezuela, is now effectively controlled by the United States. Russia recently promised to send oil but its ships are nowhere to be seen. And other oil-exporting countries friendly to Cuba are staying away, Piñón said, including Brazil, Angola, and Algeria. “All of these countries have their own problems,” he said. “Why antagonize the White House?”
After Washington took control of Venezuela’s oil, Mexico was left as Cuba’s primary provider. But after Trump threatened tariffs, it halted its shipments. Mexico is economically dependent on the United States and locked in negotiations with Washington over an expiring trade deal.
