03/17 Closing Prices / revised 03/18/2025 08:00 GMT | 03/17 OPEC Basket  $73.65 +$0.67 cents | 03/14 Mexico Basket (MME) $63.82 +$0.51 cents | (MME price for March 17 and 18 will be published on March 19 ) 01/31 Venezuela Basket (Merey)  $66.86   +$5.73 cents  03/17 NYMEX Light Sweet Crude  $67.58 +$0.40 cents | 03/17 ICE Brent $71.07 +$0.49 cents  03/17 Gasoline RBOB NYC Harbor  $2.1842 +0.0325 cents 03/17 Heating oil NY Harbor  $2.2038 +0.0372 cents | 03/17 NYMEX Natural Gas  $4.018 -0.086 cents | 03/14 Baker Hughes Rig Count (Oil & Gas) 592 = 0 | 03/18 USD – Dollar/MXN  19.9429 (data live) 03/18 EUR – USD  $1.0936 (data live)  03/18 US/Bs. (Bolivar)  $66.78800000 (data BCV) Source: WTRG/MSN/Bloomberg/MarketWatch/Reuters

Lights Return to Havana Amid the 4th National Blackout

Cuba going through fourth nationwide blackout in six months

The new crisis is said to be the consequence of persistent underfunding, outdated infrastructure, and fuel shortages.

Dave Sherwood, Reuters

HAVANA
EnergiesNet.com 03 17 2025

Cuba reconnected its national electrical grid and restored power to the majority of the capital Havana by late on Sunday, energy officials said, nearly two days after an island-wide outage knocked out power to 10 million people.

Havana´s electric company said late on Sunday that approximately two-thirds of its clients in the city had seen power restored and said that number would increase overnight.

Cheers could be heard in neighborhoods across the city as the lights flickered on after two days without electricity.

Cuba’s grid collapsed on Friday evening after a transmission line at a substation in Havana shorted, beginning a chain reaction that completely shut down power generation across the island.

Most of Havana – densely populated and a major tourism center – had gone without power since then, paralyzing commerce, shutting down most restaurants and blacking out street and stoplights across the city of two million people.

The grid operator said the country’s two largest oil-fired power plants, Felton and Antonio Guiteras, were back online and generating electricity by late Sunday, a major benchmark for restoring power across the island.

Electricity had also arrived in the country’s westernmost Pinar del Rio province, the last to see power restored, just before dark on Sunday, officials said.

Friday’s grid collapse marked the Caribbean island’s fourth nationwide blackout since October.

Cuba’s oil-fired power plants, already obsolete and struggling to keep the lights on, reached a full crisis last year as oil imports from Venezuela, Russia and Mexico dwindled.

Even before Friday´s grid collapse, many across the island had already been experiencing daily blackouts that reached 20 hours or more.

Though Cuba had made progress restoring electricity on Sunday, officials said they were generating just one-third of typical daily demand, leaving many residents still in the dark.

Schools in Pinar del Río, Artemisa and Mayabeque provinces in western Cuba would remain closed until Tuesday to assure adequate conditions for students, the education ministry said.

Cuba blames the country’s mounting energy crisis on a Cold War-era U.S. trade embargo and fresh restrictions from U.S. President Donald Trump, who recently tightened sanctions on the communist-run government and vowed to restore a “tough” policy toward the long-time U.S. foe.

The government is pushing to develop large solar farms with help from China in a bid to reduce dependence on antiquated oil-fired generation.

Reporting by Dave Sherwood; Editing by David Holmes and Lincoln Feast.

reuters.com 03 14 2025

Share this news

Leave a Comment


 EnergiesNet.com

About Us

 

By Elio Ohep · Launched in 1999 under Petroleumworld.com

Information & News on Latin America’s Energy, Oil, Gas,
Renewables, Climate, Technology, Politics and Social issues

Contact : editor@petroleuworld.com


CopyRight©1999-2024, Petroleumworld.com
, EnergiesNet.com™  /
Elio Ohep – All rights reserved
 

This site is a public free site and it contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner.We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of business, environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have chosen to view the included information for research, information, and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission fromPetroleumworld or the copyright owner of the materia

 

Energy - Environment

No posts found!

Point of View

EIA Total Energy Review
This Week in Petroleum