By José de Córdoba, Vera Bergengruen and Deborah Acosta

MIAMI -- The Trump administration is loosening some restrictions on fuel shipments to Cuba, allowing the resale of Venezuelan oil to private companies on the Communist island amid a growing humanitarian crisis there.

The policy applies to transactions involving Cuba's small private sector "that support the Cuban people" but sales to the government in Havana would remain illegal, the Treasury Department said Wednesday. The Cuban state has long monopolized the oil trade but changed course this month, allowing the growing number of small Cuban private businesses to import fuel.

The U.S. ended Venezuela's oil shipments to Cuba after an American military operation captured Venezuela's authoritarian leader Nicolás Maduro in Caracas and transported him to a Brooklyn jail for trial on drug-trafficking charges, which he denies. The last fuel shipment was on Jan. 9 from Mexico. Since then, President Trump has threatened tariffs on any nation that sends fuel, and declared that Cuba needs to make a deal to end the pressure.

In another important development Wednesday, the Treasury clarified that some shipments of American fuel would also be permissible for a handful of U.S. companies with Biden-era commercial licenses that allows them to export diesel and gasoline to Cuba.

The communist country's private business sector is making a desperate bid to import fuel with the approval of the Trump administration to stave off the hunger and disease spreading across the island. The de facto American oil embargo on Cuba is suffocating its already weak economy and affecting food and water distribution and basic sanitation.

Humanitarian assistance has poured into Cuba, but much of it remains in ports because there is no fuel to transport it to people who need it.

"This could make all the difference between the brutal humanitarian crisis we are going through, and a total humanitarian catastrophe," said Aldo Álvarez, owner of Mercatoria, a Cuban food importer and distributor. "People will die in this crisis, but perhaps less people will die."

The amount of fuel in the process of being shipped to Cuba is tiny -- less than a hundred thousand gallons in small tank containers, but it would represent an important first step in preventing an economic catastrophe.

Privately, some Trump officials have acknowledged that the humanitarian situation on the island has deteriorated faster than they expected.

Cuba's Communist government has long imported oil and diesel to cover most of its energy needs, first from the Soviet Union and later from Venezuela. Mexico also provided some oil.

Since Trump effectively cut off Cuba's oil imports, the island is relying on the 40,000 barrels of crude that it produces each, far short of the minimum 100,000 barrels a day it needs.

The U.S. restrictions exacerbated an implosion that was decades in the making because of the government's economic mismanagement, sparking global concerns about a looming humanitarian catastrophe. Cuba isn't a market economy, and the ruling regime has consistently curtailed entrepreneurial activity as part of an effort to maintain totalitarian control of society.

Alvarez had to lay off 100 employees as the economic collapse intensified in recent weeks. "I can't work without fuel," he said. He is hoping to receive an initial shipment of diesel from the U.S. next week.

The carve-outs aren't about structural reform of the Communist regime, "but a tactical opening to survive the crisis," said Hugo Cancio, a Cuban-American businessman who owns Katapulk, an online marketplace that operates on the island, making some 1,500 deliveries a day.

"There is total paralysis," he said. "Containers full of food are not getting out of the ports, and farmers and cooperatives in the countryside can't get their rice and yucca out of the fields and to markets in the city."

If Cuba's fuel crisis isn't quickly resolved, it will destroy the island's beleaguered private sector, which is made up of some 10,000 small firms, Cancio said. These companies have become a growing force in the Cuban economy, importing more than $1 billion in food and goods last year, Cuban officials say.

Gasoline is almost impossible to get these days. Those able to get some have to pay up to $40 a gallon, residents say.

Write to José de Córdoba at jose.decordoba@wsj.com, Vera Bergengruen at vera.bergengruen@wsj.com and Deborah Acosta at deborah.acosta@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

February 25, 2026 12:45 ET (17:45 GMT)

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