HAVANA — Cuban officials said Saturday that crews had repaired a broken boiler at the Antonio Guiteras thermoelectric plant, ending a massive blackout that left millions in the island’s western region without power since Wednesday. The failure marked the second major outage to strike western Cuba in three months.
Cuba’s Electric Union reported that only 1,000 megawatts of electricity were available Saturday — less than half of the island’s current demand — underscoring an energy crisis rooted in a decaying grid and a fuel shortage that worsened sharply after a U.S. military operation in Venezuela severed a critical oil supply line in January.
Felix Estrada Rodríguez, a top engineer at Cuba’s Electric Union, told state-owned Canal Caribe that the plant should be operating by Saturday afternoon. He said the repair had to be carried out deliberately because of difficult working conditions.
“It is a confined space with a high temperature,” Estrada Rodríguez said.
The Electric Union did not say how many customers remained without power Saturday as crews worked to bring the plant back online.
Officials attributed both the latest failure and the island’s persistent power shortfalls to a crumbling electric grid and inadequate fuel supplies. Cuba imports most of its oil from Venezuela. The island implemented austere fuel-saving measures after a U.S. military operation in Venezuela in early January resulted in the detention of its president and halted critical oil shipments, according to the Associated Press.
President Donald Trump warned weeks after the January operation that he would impose tariffs on any country that sells or supplies oil to Cuba.