After months of a crippling oil blockade on Cuba imposed by the United States, the fuel-starved country may now see some relief after the US government said it would begin authorising companies to resell Venezuelan oil, even as tensions between the two reach a head.
On Wednesday, the US Department of the Treasury said it would allow the resale of Venezuelan oil for “commercial and humanitarian use” in Cuba as the small island nation faces one of its worst fuel crises in decades.
Venezuela is the largest provider of oil to Cuba. However, since US forces abducted Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in January and imprisoned him to face drugs and weapons charges in a New York court, the Donald Trump administration has taken control of Caracas’s oil and halted exports to Havana.
tldr: you have to get a special license from the us empire to sell to oil to cuba and (reading between the lines) next to no one is going to get this license. i’m guessing it’s to save face politically by creating plausible deniability that denying the cubans oil.
Washington said on Wednesday it would issue companies with special licences to resell Venezuelan oil to Cuba “in solidarity” with the Cuban people.
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However, “persons or entities associated with the Cuban military, intelligence services, or other government institutions” will be barred from obtaining oil sales licences, the US Treasury Department said this week.
