Pirates on the high seas

By Roberto Morejón

U.S. trickery to prevent the shipment of fuel to Cuba from foreign markets persists, despite the change of administration in Washington, according to authorities of the Caribbean country.

Perhaps some observers naively thought that when Donald Trump left the White House, he would lose support for one of the most dangerous and harmful spearheads of the U.S. blockade against Cuba.

Under the former president's mandate, in some periods Cubans suffered annoying power cuts due to delays in the dispatch of fuel to national ports.

One year after Trump's departure, the Cuban government confirmed the continuity of the U.S. persecution of ships, shipping companies and insurance companies, with the aim of hindering the transport of energy to the largest of the Antilles.

This was corroborated on Twitter by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Bruno Rodríguez, who revealed that 54 vessels and 27 companies were blacklisted in 2019.

That precedent should have been erased when the pandemic caused by the new coronavirus broke out in 2020, a more disadvantageous situation for Cuba, the target of the blockade. But this did not happen.

Under the Democratic administration, the list of restricted Cuban entities, banned to operations carried out by persons under U.S. jurisdiction, grew in extension.

The shipping companies MCC and Zim, for example, renounced working with Cuba in 2021 to avoid fines under the blockade.

Although Cuba covers part of the requirements of its thermoelectric plants with native crude, it still has to acquire tens of thousands of barrels abroad, which together with delays in the maintenance of those enclaves contributed to making the situation of the national electro-energy system more complex.

With great sacrifices, the country's economy seeks to efficiently start up the electricity generating units, by means of a plan which, due to its high cost, will be very difficult to execute with the desired speed.

Any inconvenience in the arrival of energy at ports adds more tension to the Cuban electro-energy system, which seems to be the intention of the new pirates of the twenty-first century, when they harass ships, shipping companies, insurance companies and suppliers.