10/19/2026
📌Faced with crisis, in February Cuba’s government began letting the island’s private businesses import fuel and started permitting entrepreneurs to lease petrol stations that were previously state-run.
📌The United States likewise gave American sellers permission to export light fuels—diesel, petrol, propane and the like—to Cubans outside government.
📌These new imports are not fixing the problems with the energy grid, which is managed by the government.
📌But the influx of light fuels has lessened some problems, all the same.
📌Cars are back on the roads; public transport has picked up. People and businesses lucky enough to afford private generators are finding it a bit easier to run them.
📌The price of petrol has dropped to around $2.50 a litre, half the price before the surge in American fuel began. There is even price competition between the petrol stations, says Omar Everleny, an economist in Havana.
📌By ending the state fuel monopoly, the government has handed entrepreneurs a new and profitable line of business.
📌The hope is that to get the oil it needs for its power stations, the regime may privatise bits of Cupet, the state oil company, too. On October 12th Cuba passed a law encouraging private participation in the entire oil industry, in the hope of producing more oil itself.
📌Booming oil sales emphasise how Cuba now depends on a country it still formally considers an enemy.
📌It has not been able to lean on allies, such as China, Mexico and Russia, to help assuage its oil problems.
📌The fuel trade is helping mint a new generation of Cuban-American entrepreneurs in Florida. And if it becomes feasible for Cuba’s private businesses to import and make use of crude oil, that will come via the United States from Venezuela. In other words, it would be from the same source as before Mr Trump’s oil blockade, but with American business folk now inserted bluntly in the middle.
📌Muddled policymaking in Washington risks sabotaging some of what is currently being achieved. On September 30th the Trump administration moved to freeze American bank accounts being used by Cuban entrepreneurs. Mr Trump, in trying to topple the Cuban government, may inadvertently have struck upon a policy that can boost the private sector and loosen the regime’s grip over the island’s unhappy people.
🎯Source: “Entrepreneurs in Cuba are snapping up American fuels” The Economist, October 15, 2026.
