An islandwide blackout strikes Cuba for the second time this week as its grid crumbles
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- An islandwide blackout plunged Cuba into darkness Friday, the second nationwide outage in a week.
- Fuel shortages linked to a U.S. energy blockade and Trump-era tariff threats have gutted power supplies, exposing aging plants and transmission lines that routinely fail and trigger cascading blackouts.
- The crisis has halted public transportation, forced cancellation of tens of thousands of surgeries and extended planned outages beyond 24 hours, deepening hardship across the island and straining Cuba’s fragile economy.
HAVANA — An islandwide blackout struck Cuba on Friday for the second time this week as the nation of nearly 10 million people grapples with a crumbling power grid and fuel shortages stemming from a U.S. energy blockade.
While total blackouts have become increasingly common in the Caribbean country, it’s unusual for back-to-back ones just days apart. Cuba’s Electric Union, the state-run utility, confirmed the outage on X.
Authorities in Cuba said the cause of the blackout was a “fluctuation in the parameters” following a failure in a line connecting the provinces of Santa Clara and Sancti Spíritus.
The electrical grid in Cuba is particularly fragile, both due to the lack of maintenance of its aging infrastructure — some power plants are more than 30 years old — and the scarcity of the fuels on which it depends.
“It has been another very difficult week under the impact of the energy blockade: two disconnections of the National Electric System, almost no fuel to power the plants, and several units out of service,” Prime Minister Manuel Marrero said on his social media account.
Authorities reported that they had begun restoring power to some areas.
On Monday, another massive blackout affected nearly 10 million people nationwide. Authorities reported during the week that service was gradually being restored from that outage.
Friday’s national collapse of the electricity system is the fourth this year. A blackout in mid-May affected the island’s eastern provinces, while a blackout in mid-March struck the entire island.
Fuel has been running out across Cuba since January, when President Trump threatened tariffs on any country that sells or provides oil to the island, deepening Cuba’s economic and financial crisis. Public transportation has largely been halted, and officials have canceled tens of thousands of surgeries.
Cuba produces only 40% of the fuel it needs, and the 730,000 barrels of oil delivered by a Russian tanker in late March ran out by the end of April. The government also has been rationing power with planned outages that can stretch to more than 24 consecutive hours.
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