https://www.wsj.com/world/americas/u-s-oil-blockade-of-venezuela-pushes-cuba-toward-collapse-75289b5b
U.S. Oil Blockade of Venezuela Pushes Cuba Toward Collapse
Communist-ruled island was already suffering from food shortages, blackouts and exodus of people, and now faces loss of cheap oil from Nicolás Maduro
Maduro’s gone. Now what?
Google: Current account: $985.4 million (2017 est.)
Export goods: Petroleum, nickel, medical products, sugar, tobacco, fish, citrus, coffee
Petroleum must be refined products from Venezuela’s crude oil. Nickel is news to me. Michael Moore told of their advances in medicine. Sugar is traditional (but world price is low). Cuban cigars are still around. Fish, citrus, and coffee.
How large is petroleum?
Nickel: Cuba ranks as a significant, though fluctuating, global nickel supplier, generally placing around the 9th to 10th largest producer worldwide, with substantial reserves and production focused on lateritic ores, primarily through its joint venture with Sherritt International to create mixed sulfides for export, mainly to China and Canada. Despite some recent declines in output, the country holds large nickel reserves and is a key producer of cobalt as well, important for batteries and alloys
Nickel can be used in some EV batteries and most hybrid batteries.
So mebbe after Greenland; then Cuba?
Oil is neither in Cuba’s top 10 imports nor exports. (Tobacco is the #1 export.) It is not in the import column because most of the oil was gratis. Not is the export column because almost all of it was needed at home.
It is reported that the Cuban military and security forces have less than three weeks of fuel, so if there is an uprising it has to last longer than three weeks.
DB2
It has been 30 years since my last trip to Cuba on a cultural/medical exchange conference. Did get to tour some hospitals and talk to several physicians and nurses. I have no idea what advances Moore is talking about, they definitely hadn’t trickled down to the largest public hospital in Havana.
Cuban cigars are good but has more of a taboo connotation with USAsians. A friend told me Dominican are much better. Since I’m a non-smoker, will have to take his word.
What Cuba does have plenty of are some beautiful, undeveloped forests and beaches. Although not from foresight or planning but from lack of capital/capitalism. That and cars from the 50s/60s but pop the hood and there is not much original left. The ingenuity used to keep them running is astounding if not borderline comical.
Hopefully the government will fall and the US will put in a puppet government.
A gas pipeline from South Florida to Cuba will be child’s play. A natural gas pipeline opens up electricity not only in Cuba, but pipeline down Cuba to Haiti and Dominican Republic then the Puerto Rico transforms the economy of all df the northern Caribbean.
If the nuke plant in Miami has extra electricity that can be sent over via an under water cable. (I think. I know a little about pipelines, I don’t know about underwater power transmission cables.)
Cheers
Qazulight (The introduction of nat gas into Northern Mexico has changed the economy there)
Getting rid of Maduro achieves little, the real seat of power is in the military and Cuba. I have heard nothing about dealing with the military. I used to say that Venezuela was a democracy by the consent of the military.
The previous time Venezuela was invaded was on May 10, 1967 by Cuba’s Che Guevara. The invasion failed. Later Che Guevara invaded Bolivia where he was captured. The CIA wanted him but the Bolivian president had him executed on the spot. Good riddance.
The Captain