NEED TO KNOW

• Cuba's Antonio Guiteras plant — its largest — suffered a boiler pipe burst March 4, knocking out power from Pinar del Río to Camagüey for an estimated 72 hours
• Venezuela had supplied roughly 50% of Cuba's oil needs; those shipments stopped after US forces captured Nicolás Maduro in January
• The US Treasury issued partial oil resale licenses to Cuba's private sector just days before the blackout — a policy shift that received little coverage

HAVANA, CUBA (TDR) — Millions of Cubans lost power March 4 when the Antonio Guiteras thermoelectric plant — the island's largest — suffered a boiler pipe burst that collapsed the national electrical grid across two-thirds of the country. But the plant failure was a trigger, not a cause. Cuba's energy infrastructure had been operating at the edge of collapse for weeks, starved of the fuel it depends on to keep aging generators running.

Cuba's Power Grid Crisis Reaches Breaking Point

By the morning of March 4, Cuba's grid was already generating only 1,180 megawatts against a national demand of 2,250 megawatts — a deficit of more than 1,000 megawatts before the Guiteras failure added to the load. The plant's technical director, Román Pérez Castañeda, told state radio that a pipe burst in the boiler caused a water leak and a subsequent fire, extinguished without major structural damage. Crews still needed to cool the furnace area before entering for repairs — a process officials said would take at least 72 hours.

"A disconnection occurred in the National Electric Power System from Camagüey to Pinar del Río. All protocols for restoring the SEN are already activated." — Lázaro Guerra Hernández, Ministry of Energy and Mines

Prime Minister Manuel Marrero Cruz posted on X that he trusted electrical workers to resolve the outage "in the shortest possible time." The US Embassy in Havana issued a security alert urging American citizens to prepare for extended disruptions, noting that Cuba's national grid had become "increasingly unreliable" with scheduled and unscheduled blackouts now a daily occurrence.

State media separately confirmed that two additional power plants had gone offline for lack of petroleum — a distinction that points directly to the fuel blockade rather than mechanical failure alone.

How Washington's Pressure Campaign Drained the Fuel Supply

The structural cause of Cuba's energy crisis runs through Washington. President Donald Trump signed Executive Order 14380 on Jan. 29, declaring a national emergency regarding Cuba and authorizing tariffs on any country supplying the island with oil. The order followed the January US military operation that captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and effectively ended Venezuela's oil shipments to Cuba overnight.

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Venezuela had been supplying approximately 35,000 barrels per day to Cuba under a longstanding barter arrangement — roughly half the island's total oil needs. That supply line vanished in January. Mexico, which had become Cuba's secondary oil supplier, temporarily halted its own shipments in late January under US tariff pressure.

"THERE WILL BE NO MORE OIL OR MONEY GOING TO CUBA – ZERO! I strongly suggest they make a deal, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE." — President Donald Trump, Truth Social

Secretary of State Marco Rubio testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in January that regime change in Cuba remains a stated US foreign policy objective. Cuba's government has attributed its deteriorating infrastructure to decades of US economic sanctions that have prevented the purchase of new equipment and replacement parts for power plants, some of which have been operating for more than 30 years.

"The SEN going dark should not be considered normal. I don't think it's right." — Arian Mendoza, 28, Havana engineer

Ordinary Cubans Bear the Burden of Geopolitical Pressure

For residents, the policy calculus is abstract. The blackout is not.

"My God, until when? Then we won't eat. We'll have to eat bread again." — Genoveva Torres, 66, Havana resident

"We must keep fighting. There's no other way. We have to move forward, blockade or no blockade." — Ernesto Couto Martínez, 76, Havana resident

As night fell March 4, neighbors across Havana gathered outdoors, cooking shared soup by wood and charcoal. By late afternoon, crews had restored power to only 2.5% of Havana customers — roughly 21,100 households. The Ministry of Energy and Mines said the grid was operating in "limited capacity, prioritizing health and water supply."

Cuba's government implemented austere fuel-saving measures in February and announced jet fuel would be unavailable at nine airports through mid-March. UN Secretary-General António Guterres has said he is "extremely concerned" about Cuba's humanitarian situation, warning it could "worsen, or even collapse" without adequate fuel.

On Feb. 26 — just days before the blackout — the US Treasury Department issued limited licenses allowing companies to resell Venezuelan oil to Cuba's private sector, a partial reversal that attracted little notice. The restriction: entities connected to the Cuban military or government are barred from obtaining those licenses — a carve-out that limits how much oil actually reaches the grid.

"There's no electricity here, there's no power here, there's no gas here. Change is needed, but quickly." — María Elena Sabina, Havana resident

As the March 4 blackout enters its second day with no full restoration timeline, the question isn't whether Cuba's aging grid can survive another mechanical failure — it's whether any amount of emergency repair can compensate for a fuel supply that has been deliberately cut in half.

Sources

This report was compiled using information from ABC News and Associated Press reporting on the blackout, Bloomberg, Al Jazeera, CBC News, and NewsNation, executive order analysis from Baker McKenzie and Holland & Knight, grid data from CiberCuba, and US Embassy alert coverage via CiberCuba.

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