Cuba deprived of electricity by the shutdown of its main thermal power station

The shutdown of Cuba’s main thermal power plant caused a breakdown in the island’s entire electrical system, the Ministry of Energy and Mines said on Friday, October 18, faced with a context of“energy emergency”. “The system is without electricity throughout the country”after the shutdown of the Antonio-Guiteras plant, Lazaro Guerra, general director of electricity at the ministry, declared on state television.

The government had tried to prevent this giant blackout by ordering the closure of schools and non-essential industries for the day and sending most civil servants home. But shortly before noon the Antonio-Guiteras power plant, the largest and most efficient in Cuba, interrupted production. “There will be no respite until the electricity is restored”reacted the Cuban communist president, Miguel Diaz-Canel, on the social network X.

The island is currently experiencing its worst crisis in three decades, with shortages of food and medicine and chronic power cuts. Electricity is produced there from eight dilapidated thermal power plants, sometimes broken down or undergoing maintenance, as well as seven floating power plants, which the government rents to Russian companies, and generators. Most of this infrastructure requires fuel to operate.

Shortages and rising demand

Cuba has already been experiencing periodic power outages for several weeks, which Prime Minister Manuel Marrero Cruz attributed Thursday to three reasons: deteriorating infrastructure, fuel shortages and rising demand. “The shortage of fuel oil is the main factor”declared the head of government during a televised speech disrupted by retransmission difficulties and delayed by several hours.

Strong winds and bad weather that accompanied Hurricane Milton last week in the region reduced fuel supplies to power plants by sea. The island’s two largest power plants, Felton and Antonio-Guiteras, are operating at low capacity and also need maintenance work immediately, according to the government, as part of a four-year infrastructure renovation plan.

Private entrepreneurs, whose number is growing strongly, are finally helping to increase demand for electricity and they will be taxed more on the energy they consume, added Mr. Marrero Cruz.

Cuba’s top oil supplier, Venezuela, cut deliveries to an average of 32,600 barrels per day in the first nine months of the year, about half as much as during the same period in 2023, data shows maritime tracing and documents from the Venezuelan oil company PDVSA, which has reduced its exports to deal with shortages on the national territory. Russia and Mexico, other oil suppliers to Cuba in the past, have also sharply reduced their deliveries.