The US Coast Guard intercepted a large cargo ship carrying fuel bound for Cuba, in a case disclosed this week as the Trump administration’s oil embargo against the island continues.
The interception itself took place nearly a month ago. The 300-foot (91-metre) vessel, named “Grace”, was stopped in the Caribbean Sea between Cuba and Mexico on 5 September after what the Coast Guard described as “dark fleet” manoeuvres — the practice of disabling tracking transponders and obscuring a ship’s movements to evade monitoring.
The case was reported by The New York Times on Friday, citing a Coast Guard statement, and carried onward by Reuters. The Coast Guard did not immediately respond to a request for comment, and officials did not say how they established the fuel was headed to Cuba, beyond attributing the assessment to intelligence. How much fuel the vessel was carrying was not disclosed.
An island running short
The seizure sits inside a broader squeeze. A US-imposed oil blockade introduced earlier this year has left Cuba contending with fuel shortages and blackouts, worsened by long-degraded generating infrastructure. The Trump administration has stated openly that its goal is to change the Cuban government.
Cuba’s traditional suppliers have fallen away. Oil shipments from Venezuela and Mexico ended abruptly after the United States ousted Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in January, according to the report. Coast Guard cutters now patrol the waters off Cuba, while sanctions and the threat of interdiction have discouraged tanker operators from sailing at all.
That combination — enforcement at sea plus the deterrent effect on commercial shipping — has proved more restrictive than the formal embargo alone, leaving the few vessels still willing to make the run reliant on concealment tactics of the kind attributed to the “Grace”.
Source: Hiru News, reporting Reuters.
