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Energy

Cuba’s long-ailing power supply fails

Emily Morris, a senior research fellow at the University College London’s Institute of the Americas speaks with The World’s Host Marco Werman about Cuba’s failing power grid.

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People walk along the boardwalk as waves crash during a power outage in Havana, Cuba.

Ramon Espinosa/AP

It’s been days since Cuba’s nationwide blackout first started, though there have been brief interludes where parts of the island have regained power.

Officials say they’re working on restoring it, but the roots of the crisis are in a power system that’s long been undependable.

During the chaos of the outage, Hurricane Oscar made landfall on Sunday.

Emily Morris, a senior research fellow at the University College London’s Institute of the Americas, who studies Cuba’s economy, explained the origins of the crisis and where it’s headed.

Residents play dominoes during a massive blackout after a major power plant failed in Havana, Cuba, on Saturday.Ramon Espinosa/AP

“It’s a combination of different factors,” Morris said. “One of the power stations goes out of action and then that puts more burden on the next power station, which then goes out of action. So, there’s a kind of a knock-on effect. When you have a breakdown in one area, it puts more pressure on the others.”

The main factors Morris attributes to the crisis are the hurricane and US sanctions, both of which have made it difficult for Cuba to import oil.

“That’s actually meant that they’ve had to close down some of the power stations or they’ve had to impose power cuts — rolling power cuts, scheduled ones — around the country in order to save fuel,” she explained. “This has been a crisis, it’s been going on for a long time. Clearly, the storms haven’t helped with the deliveries of the shipments, but US sanctions also mean that it’s very, very difficult for them to process payments. It’s very, very difficult for them to find ships that are prepared to bring oil to them.”

Marco Werman: What has happened that has meant fuel supplies to Cuba have not kept up with demand?
Emily Morris: Venezuelan shipments have gone down. So then, they had to look elsewhere. Part of the solution was Russian oil. The Russians want to sell their oil; the Cubans want to buy it. But then, you have to get ships to bring it across. They’re casting around for other suppliers. And it’s very, very difficult because the ships that bring the oil have to be insured.

If they’re insured by US companies, then they’re liable to sanctions. So, that actually means there are fewer ships to bring fuel to Cuba. I’ve even heard of a case where they were trying to pay one of the suppliers, but the banks wouldn’t process the payment, so the supplier wouldn’t deliver. That is an enormous problem for Cuba because the international banks are what they call “over-compliant” and won’t process payments from Cuba. 
And then there’s the age of Cuba’s electrical grid. How old is it and what’s prevented the government there from updating it? 
Well, if you look at the Cuban economy, really for the last 30 years, it has been struggling to recover from the collapse of the Soviet bloc. When there was a recovery, there was a large investment in the early 2000s, which they called the “energy revolution,” where they did some repairs, improved the grid. But most of the major plants are more than 30 years old and they’re held together by ingenuity and, I don’t know, elbow grease. You know, they have to struggle to keep them going. 
Emily, how are Cubans responding to this situation so far? 
A lot of them are very frustrated. It’s extremely difficult. Huge hardships. I mean, if you’ve got an electric cooker, you can’t even cook your food. If you’ve got a fridge, the food is going off. In that climate, if the fans go off, then the mosquitoes come. I mean, it’s really very, very difficult to manage. So, there are outbreaks of frustration.

But there’s also an awareness that there isn’t much that can be done, despite the awful weekend of false starts, with the lights coming back on and then it went off again. People are incredibly patient. The general feeling is one of resignation and stoicism. 

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

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