(Bloomberg) —
A tanker carrying a cargo of diesel believed to be bound for Cuba updated its destination to Puerto Cabello, a major port in Venezuela, after the US clarified that the communist-run island remains ineligible to receive Russian fuel.
The Sea Horse, likely carrying 200,000 barrels of Russian gas oil, had earlier posted its new destination as neighboring Trinidad and Toboago and was heading that way as of Friday, according to ship-tracking data compiled by Bloomberg. Last month, the tanker abruptly halted its voyage in the middle of the North Atlantic amid a de facto US fuel blockade of the island.
On Thursday, the Treasury Department added Cuba to a list of countries restricted from taking delivery of Russian fuel. The updated general license was issued a week after the US loosened sanctions on Russian oil to ease energy pressures resulting from the war it launched on Iran nearly three weeks ago in concert with its ally Israel.
Another tanker, the Anatoly Kolodkin, was still voyaging through the Atlantic toward the port of Matanzas in Cuba, the shipping data show. That vessel will mark another test of US deterrence.
When asked to confirm if Russian oil was headed to Cuba on Friday, a Kremlin official declined to comment specifically on fuel shipments. Instead, presidential spokesman Dmitri Peskov told reporters that Moscow was “maintaining permanent contact with the Cuban leadership” and was exploring options to provide aid to Havana amid its troubles, according to Interfax.
Cuba’s president acknowledged last week that the island hasn’t received oil in three months as Donald Trump ramps up economic pressure on the island in hopes of ending 67 years of one-party rule.
At the start of January, the US cut off Havana’s supply of Venezuelan crude by capturing that country’s leader in Caracas. Then Trump threatened tariffs on any nation that came to Cuba’s energy aid, prompting Mexico to halt shipments as well.
Conditions on the island were already bleak after years of tough US sanctions. But now that Trump is choking off fuel and as well as funding, Cuba’s economy is in free-fall and its energy system in full-blown crisis. The nation suffered a national blackout this week, at least its sixth in the span of about a year.
The re-routing of the Sea Horse suggests even Cuba’s closest allies are unwilling to test Trump’s resolve.
Asked about the two vessels on Thursday, a top Cuban official expressed optimism that help was on the way. “I hope that some oil arrives in Cuba,” Ernesto Soberón Guzmán, Havana’s envoy to the United Nations, said in an interview with Bloomberg This Weekend Anchor David Gura.
A fresh shipment would lessen the impact of the humanitarian crisis the island is facing as result of the US blockade, he said. Cuba’s power plants “are ready to produce electricity and they cannot produce electricity because we don’t have oil.”
Were fuel to arrive, it would lessen the strain on the electric grid, Soberón Guzmán said. It could also allow Cuba to reduce a lengthy waiting list for surgeries and potentially reopen in-person classes at schools and resume canceled public transit routes, he added.
©2026 Bloomberg L.P.
