Cuba is running dangerously low on fuel, with almost no oil tankers reaching the island in recent months, pushing the country toward a severe humanitarian crisis and putting enormous strain on its government. Shipping data and satellite images analyzed by The New York Times show that Cuban-linked vessels have barely left port. Traditional suppliers have stopped deliveries or refused to send more. U.S. authorities have interceptedshipsattempting to bring fuel, and several tankers that set out in search of cargo have returned empty or been forced to divert.

Last week one tanker spent five days burning fuel to reach Curaçao, only to leave without loading anything. Three days later, the U.S. Coast Guard stopped another vessel carrying Colombian fuel oil just 70 miles from Cuba. President Trump has made clear he intends to stop all oil shipments to Cuba. While the White House has not officially called its actions a blockade, experts who have followed Cuba for decades say that is exactly what it has become.

Fulton Armstrong, a former CIA analyst on Latin America who has studied the island since 1984, said the situation marks the most serious U.S. pressure since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. “Among us longtime Cuba watchers, we’ve always resisted people using the word blockade, but it is indeed a blockade," he said, as per the report.

The largest U.S. military presence in the Caribbean in decades is now patrolling the waters around Cuba, fresh from operations that blocked Venezuelan oil shipments before the U.S. captured Nicolás Maduro last month. A tanker called the Ocean Mariner illustrates the pattern. On January 29 it loaded 84,579 barrels of fuel oil in Barranquilla, Colombia. It had previously delivered Cuba's last known shipment from Mexico on January 9. After leaving Colombia, it first broadcast a destination of the Dominican Republic.

Twelve days later it turned toward Cuba. On February 11, when it was only 65 miles away, it suddenly reversed course. The next day a U.S. Coast Guard vessel pulled alongside and stayed with it for nearly two days, escorting it into Dominican waters. The ship remained there full of fuel for several days before another Coast Guard vessel escorted it north toward the Bahamas.

The United Nations has criticized the U.S. policy as a violation of international law that is making ordinary Cubans suffer more. The UN human rights office has warned that without enough energy, the country could face a full humanitarian crisis.

Cuba's fuel reserves could run out by mid-March, according to estimates from a University of Texas team led by former oil executive Jorge Piñón. Almost all of the island's energy depends on oil and oil products. President Miguel Díaz-Canel has said Cuba is open to talks with Washington and is working creatively to find fuel despite the obstacles. “We are making every effort so that the country can once again have fuel,” he told reporters. “We have to do very hard, very creative and very intelligent work to overcome all these obstacles.”

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