The United States sanctions Cuba’s state oil and gas company, amid rising tensions

The Secretary of State of the United States, Marco Rubio, maintained that key assets of the company, known as Cupet, They were “illegally expropriated from American owners years ago.”

He also accused the Cuban government of turning energy into a weapon.

“While the Cuban people have suffered fuel shortages and blackouts due to decades of underinvestment in critical infrastructure, Cuba’s communist leaders “They have diverted energy resources to fill their pockets.”Rubio said in a statement.

Furthermore, he pointed out, without providing evidence, that Cuban officials “resell countless barrels of scarce energy on the secondary market, hoard energy supplies for their military, intelligence and repressive forces, and ration energy as a tool of social control”.

So far, the Cuban government has not responded to a message requesting comment. He has previously said that the sanctions punish all Cubans and seek to strangle the economy to destabilize both the government and its people.

Cupet fuel sales to the public They are almost non-existent and are currently rationed.

Thursday’s announcement comes nearly a week after the U.S. government sanction Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel and other officialsas well as several institutions.

Rubio indicated in a statement that all properties or interests of Cupet located in the United States or in the possession or control of persons in the United States are blocked.

“President Trump wants a new future for the Cuban people with greater freedom and economic and political opportunities,” Rubio wrote. “Until then, we will continue to target the communist regime’s ability to leverage its energy trade to advance its corrupt agenda and violently repress the Cuban people.”

Cuba already faces difficulties under a decades-long embargo and the lack of oil, while the United States continues to pressure it to change its economic and political model.

Power outages – already common given the economic and energy crisis that has affected the island for five years – have only intensified since the president of the United States, Donald Trump, threatened, at the end of January, to impose tariffs on any country that sells or supplies oil to Cuba.

Both countries have recognized who have had conversationsbut its extent is unknown.

Meanwhile, Trump has threatened military action in Cuba since the US military invaded Venezuela and arrested former President Nicolás Maduro.

Trump said last Thursday that Cuba “has more or less collapsed” and stated: “We’re going to take care of that as soon as we’re done” with military operations in Iran.