Mexico becomes crucial fuel supplier to Cuba but pledges no extra shipments after Maduro toppled

MEXICO CITY (AP) — As the United States prepares to seize control of Venezuelan oil and the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump hardens its stance toward Cuba, Mexico has emerged as a key fuel supplier to Havana.

It’s a role that could further complicate already strained relations with the Trump administration, even though the Mexican government insists that exports to the island have not increased.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum acknowledged on Wednesday that “with the current situation in Venezuela, Mexico has become an important supplier” of crude oil to Cuba, but asserted that “no more oil is being sent than has been sent historically; there is no specific shipment.”

She added that those shipments are made via “contracts” or as “humanitarian aid,” but offered no concrete figures on the number of barrels exported.

Following the 1959 revolution that toppled dictator Fulgencio Batista, the U.S. imposed a trade embargo on Cuba in response to the nationalization of American-owned property. Under the embargo — long denounced by many countries, including Mexico — Cubans have suffered economic and energy crises, driving hundreds of thousands of Cubans to migrate, especially to the United States.

State-owned oil company Petróleos Mexicanos did not immediately respond to a request for data. According to its most recent report to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, SEC, from January to Sept. 30, 2025, Mexico shipped 19,200 barrels per day to Cuba: 17,200 barrels of crude oil and 2,000 barrels of refined products.

Jorge Piñón, of the Energy Institute at the University of Texas at Austin, who tracks shipments using oil tracking services and satellite technology, shared similar data this week with The Associated Press for the same period. He had tracked 22,000 barrels per day and said that the figure dropped to 7,000 barrels after U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s visit to Mexico City in September 2025.

Meanwhile, in the last three months, Maduro’s government exported an average of 35,000 barrels a day to Cuba, approximately a quarter of the island’s total demand, according to Piñón.

The academic saw no likelihood that Mexico would increase its shipments: “The U.S. government would go bonkers,” he said.

“There will be more pressure from the United States regarding Cuba,” said Oscar Ocampo of the Mexican Institute for Competitiveness, adding that oil will predictably be one of the areas under pressure, a view shared by many experts.

Mexico has historically sent oil to Cuba, especially during periods of power blackouts and social unrest.

After widespread protests in Cuba in 2021, Mexico sent one of its largest humanitarian aid shipments, which included 100,000 barrels of fuel. And in October 2024, it sent more than 400,000 barrels in just a few days following serious blackouts in Cuba, according to data provided at the time by Piñón.

“The way this has been done also incentivizes opacity,” Ocampo said, because since 2023, the shipments have been made via private Pemex subsidiary, Gasolinas Bienestar, whose financial situation “is not transparent.”

In its report to the SEC, Pemex states that the shipments to Cuba were valued at approximately $400 million and were “sales” made through contracts at market price. But Ocampo says it cannot clearly be determined whether that was the case or if they were discounted shipments, with some kind of quid pro quo — perhaps the deployment of doctors — or as humanitarian aid.

The foreseeable lack of profitability in supplying oil to Cuba comes as 2025 is set to become the year in which Pemex exported the least amount of crude oil, “with less than 600,000 barrels per day, when just a couple of years ago we exported more than 1 million,” Ocampo said.

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Associated Press reporter Dánica Coto in San Juan, Puerto Rico contributed.

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