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.
“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.”
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.
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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