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Ana Hurtado Martínez, a Spanish propagandist on the payroll of the Cuban and Venezuelan regimes, published an article this Tuesday in Telesur titled “Cuba Advances Toward Oil Sovereignty and Reaches Two Million Tons of Crude.”
In the text, the author repeated the official discourse of the Cuban regime and celebrated what she presented as a “strategic shift” in the island's oil industry, resulting from technological innovations and connections with universities and research centers.
The article fits within the usual triumphalist narrative of the official press and its foreign spokespersons: turning any partial progress into a historic leap while simultaneously concealing the figures that depict the most severe energy crisis Cuba has faced in decades, which is worsening.
The most striking aspect of Hurtado Martínez's text is the fact that serves as the backbone of his narrative: Cuba would have reached two million tons of equivalent oil produced so far this year. This figure, presented as an achievement of the so-called "national science," deserves to be analyzed in light of the data published by the regime itself and the daily experiences of Cubans.
The astounding fact: From one million to two million in just two months
In June 2025, the Unión Cuba-Petróleo (CUPET) publicly announced that they had reached the first million tons of crude oil extracted for the year. The news was accompanied by messages of pride on official social media, highlighting the work of oil workers.
Only two months later, in August, the figure suddenly doubled: Hurtado cited new reports from the state-owned CUPET, an entity belonging to the Ministry of Energy and Mines (MINEM), and spoke of the extraction of two million tons, presenting it as evidence of productive recovery.
The leap is, at the very least, surprising. In a context of deteriorating infrastructure, lack of foreign investment, daily blackouts, and fuel shortages, it's hard to believe that production has doubled in such a short time.
Even more so when CUPET itself acknowledged, at the end of 2024, that it had failed to meet its extraction plan, ending the year with only 98.5% of what was expected.
Astonishment is not just arithmetic: it is political. This inflated use of figures aims to sell the idea of a non-existent energy self-sufficiency, just at the moment when the island is experiencing the most acute fuel shortage since the Special Period and its ally is in a critical situation, marked by the naval and military deployment of the Trump administration to pressure the Maduro regime and put an end to the narco-state built with the help of the Cuban regime.
The real need versus the propaganda discourse
The Minister of Energy, Vicente de la O Levy, declared this August that Cuba should import five million tons of fuel per year to meet its needs. This volume would enable the continuity of electricity generation, industry, transport, and basic services.
In that context, even if the two million tons were real, they would barely cover 40% of the country's needs. The rest must come from abroad.
And there lies the great contradiction that Hurtado Martínez keeps silent about: if Cuba is moving towards oil sovereignty, why is it increasingly dependent on shipments from Venezuela, Mexico, and Russia?
National production: Heavy, sulfurous crude with limited utility
Cuban oil has a structural problem: it is heavy and has a high sulfur content, which limits its processing in refineries and makes it inefficient for transportation and other industrial uses. To be able to use it in thermal power plants, it is necessary to import diluents.
Moreover, the attempts to diversify production have revealed their limitations. The Australian company Melbana Energy announced this year the discovery of light crude oil in the Alameda-2 well in Matanzas, but the news had a catch: that oil does not stay in Cuba; it is exported.
According to statements from the company in May, they had already stored more than 15,000 barrels of high-quality crude oil and had received authorization from the Cuban regime to export it abroad.
In other words, while the official discourse speaks of sovereignty, the few improvements in quality are aimed at generating foreign currency, not at reducing the country's dependence.
Increasing imports: Venezuela and Mexico support the island
Hurtado's narrative overlooks another essential fact: the absolute dependence on imports.
In July 2025, Venezuela sent Cuba about 31,000 daily barrels of crude oil and derivatives, a rise compared to the historical low of June (8,000 bpd), but still far from the commitments of the past: 55,000 bpd agreed upon in 2000 between Hugo Chávez and the dictator Fidel Castro, and over 100,000 bpd during the years of Venezuela's oil boom.
The other lifeline has been Mexico. Between May and June of this year, Pemex sent 10.2 million barrels of crude oil and 132.5 million liters of fuels to Cuba, amounting to about 850 million dollars. This quantity exceeds the total exported in the previous two years combined.
If Cuba is achieving "energy sovereignty," how can we explain then that external shipments are multiplying?
Real Life: Blackouts, Deficit, and Resignation
Beyond the manipulated figures, the reality for Cubans is different. The Electric Union has reported generation deficits of over 1,700 megawatts, resulting in daily and prolonged outages.
Distributed generation relies on imported diesel, which is often delayed at the ports because the country cannot afford it.
The contrast between the official narrative and everyday life is stark: while the propaganda speaks of horizontal drilling, technological innovation, and national cabotage, millions of households endure nights without fans, stoves turned off, and paralyzed transportation.
The role of propaganda
The article in Telesur by the happily married Ana Hurtado Martínez serves a clear political function: to reinforce the narrative of resistance of the Cuban regime, transforming an inflated fact into a symbol of sovereignty. It is about disguising structural dependency with phrases like “national science,” “technological innovation,” and “vision for the future.”
But the gap between rhetoric and reality is widening. The propaganda tries to sell "two million tons" as a historic leap, when in truth it is insufficient, questionable, and contradictory to the landscape of massive imports and widespread blackouts.
The "oil sovereignty" presented by Telesur is nothing more than a propagandistic illusion. Cuba remains a country dependent on imports, with a national production of low-quality heavy crude that is unable to meet even half of its needs.
The jump from one million in June to two million in August is an exercise in statistical manipulation aimed at supporting a political narrative, rather than reflecting the island's energy reality.
The Cuban population, on the other hand, experiences daily the cost of the gap between propaganda and reality: endless blackouts, scarce gasoline, a collapsed transportation system, and an increasingly unclear energy future.
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