Russia plans to send a second oil tanker to crisis-ridden Cuba, further testing an effective US energy blockade of the communist-run island.
Russian Energy Minister Sergey Tsivilev told the state-run TASS news agency that the second ship is being loaded.
The Donald Trump administration had blocked all major oil shipments to the island for more than three months, when it finally let through a Russian vessel on March 30 carrying 100,000 tons of crude.
Trump called the exception a humanitarian gesture, but White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said it didn’t represent a fundamental change in the US maximum pressure campaign against the communist-run island.
Brett Erickson, a sanctions expert and managing principal of Obsidian Risk Advisors, said oil markets are too fragile, with the ongoing war in Iran, and Washington is likely too focused elsewhere, to try to block this new tanker.
“Energy markets are too volatile to think that the US is going to escalate with Russia and Cuba,” Erickson said. “This is the consequence of a distracted and over-stretched foreign policy.”
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