President Sheinbaum: Mexico Ships Oil to Cuba for Humanitarian Reasons

ByEnrique Méndez and Emir Olivares

This article by Enrique Méndez and Emir Olivares originally appeared in the December 23, 2025 edition of La Jornada, Mexico’s premier left wing daily newspaper.

The shipment of oil from Mexico to Cuba is for humanitarian reasons and is part of “the agreements that have been made on this matter” by all governments, regardless of the political party, and is done “within a legal framework, as a sovereign country, continuing a series of historically provided support,” stated President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo.

In the President’s morning press conference, she reported that she received a report from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs that includes energy and financial cooperation between the two countries.

Thus, she mentioned that in 1994, during the “special period” in Cuba – the economic crisis that broke out in the early 1990s after the collapse of the Soviet Union – an investment of 350 million dollars was formalized for the modernization of the Cienfuegos refinery, “a strategic swap operation ”, that is, an exchange of debt for investment.

Then, in 2012, letters of intent were signed for Pemex to provide technical assistance to the Cuban state oil company CUPET, which allowed for its presence in the exploration projects it carried out with international consortia, he said.

She recalled that in that year, the administration of former President Enrique Peña Nieto “forgave the debt that the government of Havana had with PEMEX and 70 percent of the historical liability with Bancomext (National Bank of Foreign Trade); the rest was restructured to promote bilateral exchange.”

The information includes a chronology of Mexican and Cuban presidential meetings, from the first visit – after the triumph of the Cuban revolution – of Luis Echeverría Álvarez to the island, in August 1975. “José López Portillo visited Havana; Fidel Castro also came to Mexico with Carlos Salinas de Gortari, who in turn went to Cuba after the fall of the Soviet Union.”

She recalled that former President Ernesto Zedillo attended the Ibero-American Summit and also met with Cuban dissidents. “With Vicente Fox, there was that ‘eat and leave’ incident when Fidel Castro came to Mexico. Jorge Castañeda was at the Foreign Ministry, and they were concerned that George Bush would meet with Castro” at the Monterrey summit.

She noted that in subsequent six-year terms, Felipe Calderón, Peña Nieto, and Andrés Manuel López Obrador traveled to Havana, and when asked directly, she indicated that he does not currently have a visit to the island planned.

“This is important because the Mexico-Cuba relationship is historic. Mexico was the only country that opposed the (United States) blockade from the outset. This is not a new situation. And everything is done within the framework of the law and also for humanitarian reasons with the Cuban people,” she emphasized.

She also said she will ask Pemex to specify how many barrels of oil are being sent to the island, as well as the cost of transportation, cargo handling, and port unloading. “Everything is legal, and it’s part of something that has been done with Cuba for a long time,” she insisted.