By Dave Sherwood and Marianna Párraga
HAVANA (Reuters) -Cuba restored some power to its grid mid-afternoon on Friday, officials said, hours after the island was plunged into a nationwide blackout following the collapse of one of its main power plants.
The vast majority of the country’s 10 million residents were still in the dark on Friday night, but scattered areas of the capital Havana, including some of the city’s main hospitals, saw the lights come back on shortly after the dusk.
Grid operator UNE said it expected to restart at least five of its oil-fired generating plants overnight, providing enough electricity, it said, to begin returning power to wider areas of the country.
The communist government closed schools and non-essential industry early Friday and sent most state workers home in a last-ditch effort to keep the lights on after weeks of severe power outages. Recreational and cultural activities, including nightclubs, were also ordered to close.
But shortly before noon, the Antonio Guiteras power plant, the largest and most efficient in the country, stopped working, causing a complete failure of the grid and suddenly leaving the entire island without electricity.
Officials said late Friday that they were working to fix the problem that had caused the oil-fired plant to fail. They did not specify the cause of their collapse.
The blackout marks a new low on an island where life has become increasingly unbearable, with residents suffering shortages of food, fuel, water and medicine.
Virtually all commerce in Havana was paralyzed on Friday. Many residents were sitting sweating at the doors. The tourists crouched down in frustration. As night fell, the city was almost completely enveloped in darkness.
“We went to a restaurant and they didn’t have food because there was no electricity, now we are also without internet,” said Brazilian tourist Carlos Roberto Julio, recently arrived in Havana. “In two days we have already had several problems.”
Prime Minister Manuel Marrero this week attributed worsening blackouts over the past few weeks to a perfect storm well known to most Cubans: deteriorating infrastructure, fuel shortages and increased demand.
“Fuel shortages are the most important factor,” Marrero said in a televised address to the nation.
Strong winds that began with Hurricane Milton last week have crippled the island’s ability to transport scarce fuel from offshore ships to its power plants, officials said.
REDUCED FUEL
Cuba’s government also blames the U.S. trade embargo, as well as then-President Donald Trump’s sanctions, for difficulties in acquiring fuel and spare parts to operate its oil-fired plants.
“The complex scenario is mainly due to the intensification of the economic war and the financial and energy persecution of the United States,” Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel said on Thursday.
A spokesman for the White House National Security Council said: “The United States is not to blame for today’s blackout on the island or the overall energy situation in Cuba.”
A State Department official said late Friday that Washington was closely monitoring the possible humanitarian impact of the blackout, but that the Cuban government had not requested assistance.
For many Cubans, far removed from politics and accustomed to regular power outages, the national blackout was nothing more than a normal Friday night.
Carlos Manuel Pedre said he had turned to simple pleasures to pass the time.
“In the times we live in, with everything that happens in our country, the most logical entertainment is dominoes,” he said while playing the popular game with friends. “We are in a total crisis.”
While demand for electricity has grown in recent years alongside Cuba’s nascent private sector, fuel supply has fallen dramatically.
Cuba’s largest oil supplier, Venezuela, has reduced shipments to the island to an average of 32,600 barrels per day in the first nine months of the year, barely half of the 60,000 bpd sent in the same period of 2023, according to data from vessel tracking and internal shipping documents of the Venezuelan state company PDVSA.
PDVSA, whose refining infrastructure is also in trouble, has tried this year to avoid a new wave of fuel shortages in the country, leaving smaller volumes available for export to allied countries like Cuba.
Russia and Mexico, which in the past sent fuel to Cuba, have also significantly reduced their shipments.
The deficits have left Cuba to fend for itself in the much more expensive spot market at a time when its government is on the brink of bankruptcy.