The Minister of Energy and Mines of Cuba, Vicente de la O Levy, appeared on state television to defend the distribution of electrical outages in the country and to assure that the differences between provinces and circuits are not due to unequal treatment, but rather to operational failures in the system.
"There is no inequality, there are mistakes," stated De la O Levy in remarks collected by Televisión Cubana and disseminated this Wednesday, amidst the worst electrical crisis that Cuba has faced in recent years.
The minister also acknowledged that the country has no generation reserves: "They don't have any," he said, without providing a timeline for a solution.
As the only positive indicator, it was mentioned that in Pinar del Río and Guantánamo, the impact of outages had decreased from more than 40 hours to less than 20 hours, although it was not specified in what period this improvement occurred.
The statements contrast with the magnitude of the energy collapse that the island is experiencing. This Wednesday, the EFE agency estimated a new record: 74% of the country will be without electricity simultaneously during peak demand hours, according to official data.
The Electric Union projected a demand of 3,200 MW for this Wednesday, compared to only 1,070 MW available, resulting in a deficit of over 2,130 MW.
In July alone, the National Electric System has experienced at least four total outages. On the 6th, a massive blackout left approximately 9.6 million people without electricity, and on July 14, another total outage occurred, attributed to the sudden failure of a thermoelectric plant.
The minister's assertion that the problems are "errors" and not inequality contradicts documented data from several provinces.
In Holguín, residential circuits received only three hours of service for every 39 or 40 hours of outage. In Santiago de Cuba, a company executive admitted: "We might not reach even two hours of service."
In some areas of Matanzas, there were up to 87 consecutive hours without electricity.
The very leadership of the regime had implicitly acknowledged this differential treatment. In May, Prime Minister Manuel Marrero Cruz ordered to "distribute better" the blackouts in Havana, and in July, President Miguel Díaz-Canel requested to "better organize" the outages amid the ongoing crisis.
De la O Levy, who has held the position since October 2022, has featured in a series of public appearances where he has acknowledged failures without any improvement in the situation.
In September 2024, he admitted that the strategy to reduce outages in the summer had failed; in October 2025, he acknowledged that the system was "on the brink of collapse"; and in May of this year, he confessed that Cuba had run out of diesel and fuel oil reserves.
In April, the minister blamed the U.S. embargo for hindering repairs and access to technological supplies for thermoelectric plants.
In the video broadcast by Cuban Television, the on-screen text summarized the situation with a diminutive: "THERE'S A LITTLE RESERVE OF ENERGY."
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