United States Imposes Sanctions on Cuba's State-Owned Oil Company
ST. JOHN’S, Antigua - Cuba has accused the United States of seeking to prevent Havana’s ability to extract and produce even a small portion of the fuel it needs for its survival from its own natural resources.
Cuba’s Ambassador to Antigua and Barbuda, Sergio Martínez, has accused Washington of taking “another step in its criminal war of economic strangulation and total suffocation against the Cuban people,” after it announced a new round of economic measures against the island.
On Thursday, the United States imposed sanctions on Cuba’s state-owned oil company, part of Donald Trump administration’s effort to restrict fuel supplies and increase pressure on the government in Havana.
The sanctions freeze any US-based assets of Unión Cuba-Petróleo and prohibit any company with US operations from doing business with the state enterprise. The action comes as the Cuba grapples with an energy crisis from the loss of fuel supplies from Venezuela following the removal of President Nicolas Maduro by American forces in January.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has accused the Miguel Díaz-Canel government of using the company “as a tool of both repression and self-serving regime kleptocracy” in the latest statement announcing the sanctions.
“While the Cuban people have suffered fuel shortages and blackouts because of decades of under-investment in critical infrastructure, Cuba’s Communist leaders have diverted energy resources to line their own pockets: reselling countless barrels of scarce energy on the secondary market, hoarding energy supplies for its military, intelligence and repressive forces, and rationing energy as a tool of social control,” Rubio said.
But Martínez said that the announcement by Rubio to include CUBAPETROLEO, commonly known as CUPET, on the list of sanctioned Cuban entities, “is not only trying to prevent a single drop of oil from entering Cuba, but is also seeking to obstruct at all costs, the country’s ability to extract and produce even a small portion of the fuel it needs for its survival from its own natural resources.
“CUPET is the Cuban company responsible for importing oil and its derivatives into the country, as well as for domestic oil and gas production -it produces 100 per cent of the gas that Cuban families use for their daily cooking,” he added.
The Cuban diplomat said that it is no coincidence that this new attack was announced after Cuba revealed that “its scientists and oil industry workers had developed a novel technology that allows for the refining of its high-density, high-sulphur crude oil, to produce lighter fuels and derivatives, which can be used more efficiently for electricity generation.
“At the same time, CUPET has signing new contracts with major foreign companies, that present the possibility for Cuba to increase its currently very limited domestic oil production. Therefore, this measure seeks to obstruct any possibility of Cuba surviving the genocidal energy blockade imposed by the United States.”
Martínez said that as usual, Rubio, who was born in Cuba, “doesn’t hold back in launching all sorts of lies and outlandish arguments to try to justify this new aggression against the Cuban people.
“His objective continues to cause the greatest possible suffering and hardship to the entire population, to force us to surrender, to accept a return to the colonial and neocolonial past of total dependence and subordination to the interests of our powerful neighbor to the north.”
Martínez said that Rubio himself acknowledged this criminal intention when he cynically stated recently that “in the summer, Cubans will not be able to alleviate the heat and high temperatures; they will have no way to store their food or cook it.”
“The US government is using every means possible to promote a scenario of total collapse in the economic and social living standards of the Cuban population, in a way that the White House can be able to sustain their slanderous campaign of portraying Cuba as a failed state, and to justify a military aggression as a supposed “humanitarian and liberating action,” Martínez said.
“We want to reiterate our calls upon the governments and peoples of the world to raise their voices in a sovereign manner and denounce the attempts by the US government to try to subjugate a small nation through genocidal policies of economic and social strangulation, and to unequivocally reject the threats to impose its imperial interests of domination by the use of military force,” Martínez added.
