US pressure has cut Cuba off from global oil supplies, forcing it to rely on US fuel, according to Wall Street Journal

US pressure has cut Cuba off from global oil supplies, forcing it to rely on US fuel, according to Wall Street Journal.

US pressure campaigns of this kind have historically pushed sanctioned or squeezed states toward alternative suppliers rather than removing demand from the market, with the crude typically re-entering via discounted barrels moving through opaque tanker channels, ship-to-ship transfers, and blended or reflagged cargoes. The operative distinction is between a genuine supply cut, which tightens balances, and a rerouting, which mainly raises freight, insurance, and intermediation costs while keeping volumes intact. The transmission channel here runs through heavy-sour differentials and the Atlantic basin: Cuba's requirements are modest in absolute terms, so the more material read-through is to enforcement posture, secondary sanctions risk for intermediaries, and the shadow-fleet trade rather than to headline WTI balances. Sequencing in past episodes has tended to follow a familiar arc: an initial compliance scramble, a period of workarounds, and eventual partial normalization of flows under new routing. What bears watching is whether the pressure extends to the suppliers and shippers themselves, which is what historically has determined whether these measures bind or merely reroute.