Cuba brings power grid back online, blames US oil blockade for blackout
Cuba restores its national power grid after a 16-hour blackout, blaming fuel shortages linked to the US oil blockade and an outage at the Antonio Guiteras power plant
 "Cuba brings power grid back online, blames US oil blockade for blackout")
Cuba brought its national electrical grid back online on Thursday after the country had been largely without power for 16 hours in an outage that Energy Ministry officials linked to the oil blockade of Cuba imposed by the United States.
Cuba has frequently struggled to keep the lights on during a years-long economic crisis but the Communist-run government faces new challenges under increased pressure from US President Donald Trump.
"The system doesn't have the ??strength that it should have, but it is connected from Pinar del Rio to Guantanamo," Lazaro Guerra, director of electricity for the Energy Ministry, told state television, referring to the entire west-to-east geography of the eyebrow-shaped Caribbean island.
Power generation still lagged with roughly 590 megawatts online, officials said, compared to its normal effective capacity of just under 2,000 megawatts, but electricity was gradually being restored.
In Havana, according to local utility EELH, roughly 36% of the city had come back online - a process the company said would proceed gradually.
Since the United States captured Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro on Jan. 3, it has cut off Venezuelan oil shipments to Cuba, depriving ??the country of its most important source of imported oil. The US also threatened to impose tariffs on any other country that exported oil to Cuba, leading Mexico to suspend any planned shipments.
The grid becomes more vulnerable to shutdowns when power generation is depressed.
The electric company Union Electrica (UNE) said on Wednesday the blackout was caused by an unexpected outage at Antonio ??Guiteras thermoelectric plant about 100 km (62 miles) east of Havana, and that repairs there would take three or four days.
"The current operational situation is fundamentally marked by the fuel shortage in the country. This shortage, coupled with the power outage (at ??the Guiteras plant), clearly triggered the system failure," Guerra said.
When asked by a journalist if the outage was a direct consequence of the US oil blockade, Guerra said, "Exactly."
Cuba has experienced a series of major, often nationwide ??blackouts in recent years, even before US actions to block oil sales, as Venezuela had already cut back on shipments and with Cuba's aging power grid in need of investment.