Millions left without power after major blackout hits Cuba's western region

HAVANA — A blackout hit the western half of Cuba on Wednesday, leaving millions of people in Havana and beyond without power in the latest outage to affect an island struggling with dwindling oil reserves.

The government’s Electric Union confirmed the outage on social platform X, saying it affected people from the eastern town of Pinar del Rio to the central town of Camaguey.

The agency said crews were working to restore power.

It is the second such outage to affect Cuba’s western region in the past three months.

It wasn’t immediately clear what caused Wednesday’s outage.

Cuba is struggling with dwindling oil reserves after the U.S. attacked Venezuela in early January, a move that halted critical petroleum shipments from the South America country. Later that month, U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to impose tariffs on any country that would sell or supply Cuba with oil.

Last month, Cuba’s government implemented austere fuel-saving measures and warned that jet fuel wouldn’t be available at nine airports across the island until mid-March.

Prior to the attack, the island already was struggling with a crumbling electric grid, generation deficits and interruptions in fuel supplies.