US Eases Fuel Restrictions on Cuba, Allows Resale of Venezuelan Oil to Private Sector
The Trump administration loosened restrictions on fuel shipments to Cuba, with the US Treasury's OFAC announcing a favorable licensing policy for resale of Venezuelan oil to the island's private sector. The move came amid a deepening humanitarian and energy crisis on Cuba following Trump's January 29 executive order imposing tariffs on countries supplying oil to Cuba, which caused Venezuela and Mexico to halt fuel exports. The policy explicitly excludes transactions involving the Cuban government, military, or intelligence services.
Russian and Western sources describe the same US Treasury announcement through opposing causal frames: where Lenta.ru sees the US 'easing the oil blockade' it imposed on Cuba, the Wall Street Journal presents Cuban entrepreneurs making a 'desperate bid' enabled by the Trump administration — casting the US as either the problem or the solution. An entire parallel storyline about Russia's plans to ship humanitarian oil to Cuba, complete with an embassy announcement later partially denied, appears exclusively in Russian-language coverage and is invisible to English-language readers. Meanwhile, Kommersant alone reports Secretary of State Rubio's condition that Havana must grant political and economic freedom for pressure to ease — framing the fuel policy as regime-change leverage that no Western source mentions. The most striking language comes from an unexpected source: Ukraine's Korrespondent describes Maduro's removal as 'expulsion and kidnapping by US military,' a characterization more charged than anything in the Russian press.
Developments
The US Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) announced it would apply a favorable licensing policy for resale of Venezuelan-origin oil to Cuba for commercial and humanitarian use by the private sector. Early Bloomberg and Miami Herald reports indicated the administration was preparing guidance clarifying that US energy companies could sell fuel to private Cuban businesses without special licenses, and the formal OFAC announcement followed on February 25. The policy explicitly excludes entities linked to Cuba's armed forces, intelligence services, or other government institutions. The easing comes as Cuba faces a severe energy crisis with widespread power outages, reduced hospital services, and halted garbage collection after Venezuela and Mexico ceased oil shipments under US pressure, with Cuban oil imports reportedly dropping to zero in January for the first time since 2015.