The Island did not purchase 3.2 million barrels of petroleum products in July, but rather 182,932
14ymedio, Madrid, October 19, 2026 — The surprising amount of fuel that the United States was exporting to Cuba has turned out to be unreal. Last Thursday, the U.S.-Cuba Economic and Trade Council (US-Cuba Trade) published a brief note announcing “corrections to certain products, in response to inquiries initiated by the data user community.” Although the figure focuses on the shipment with the largest discrepancies — 2.5 million barrels were reported when the actual amount was 87,000 — the total shipments for that month amounted to 182,932 barrels when diesel and oils from Miami and Tampa are added together, compared with the nearly 3.2 million previously reported.
The document containing the corrections is a spreadsheet in which the U.S. Census Bureau and the Energy Information Administration (EIA) correct several erroneous figures detected throughout the year in fuel exports and imports. It reveals that the data on sales to Cuba have been incorrect all year, although the most obvious discrepancies appear in July. Official figures showed that the Island received $61.1 million worth of fuel that month, and that is true; however, the quantities were recorded wildly incorrectly.
Now, with the figures corrected, the agency states that one shipment from Miami, for which 2,530,802 barrels had been recorded, actually amounted to 87,753. But this was not the only serious error. Another shipment from the same port was listed as 496,677 barrels, when the actual amount was 87,341. In addition, another correction concerns the port of Tampa, where a shipment recorded as 57,638 barrels actually amounted to 4,798 barrels.
Another shipment from the same port was listed as 496,677 barrels, when the actual amount was 87,341. In addition, another correction concerns the port of Tampa, where a shipment recorded as 57,638 barrels actually amounted to 4,798 barrels
The price, by contrast, matches the reported figure perfectly, making it clear that the error occurred when recording the shipment. Despite the enormous discrepancy revealed by the error, the news has gone unnoticed by most media outlets. Only one program, América Noticias USA, on America TeVé, covered the information on Miguel Cossío’s La Resistencia, where he spoke with journalist David Adams about what they called a “historic error.” During the conversation, Adams explains that the error occurred when filling out shipping forms at the ports of Miami and Tampa, where the quantities were entered in liters or gallons instead of barrels. One barrel equals 158 liters or 48 gallons.
Adams explains that the data are submitted to the U.S. Census Bureau based on receipts from shipping companies and ports, and the EIA then publishes the information. The confusion resulted in a report that was 28 times higher than the actual amount. “Look, I’ve already pulled up the figure here: 87,000 barrels compared to 2.5 million is 3.48%. In other words, that would represent 0.0348; it’s ridiculous. We’re talking about a margin of error of more than 96%.”
A closer look at the corrected figures shows that the situation is far from being limited to a single month. The incorrectly reported data date back to almost the entire year. The first errors appear in March, although in those cases they did not involve changes to the volume shipped but rather mistakes in product classification. In the third month of the year, for example, a shipment that had been recorded as a single category of oils was reclassified into two separate entries by byproduct: 1,053 barrels of heavy petroleum products and 2,203 barrels of light distillates.
By April, several shipments had been drastically reduced, most notably one that fell from 24,730 to 4,581 barrels and another that went from 95,392 to an actual total of 880. Several shipments were also reclassified in May, resulting in a considerable overall decline, from a combined 296,036 barrels to 36,321.
In June, Miami corrected a record for heavy oils that had listed 365,103 barrels, reducing it to just 56,896, although the invoice remained unchanged at $9.1 million. In addition, the port of Tampa reduced a report for the same month and under the same category from 55,761 barrels to just 1,952 barrels, while also retaining the original price of $310,460.
Although the August figures are not yet available, the value is known – $74.8 million – as this newspaper reported on October 9, and the Census Bureau’s errata sheet also identifies another substantial error. It corrects a shipment from Miami recorded as 310,753 barrels that actually amounted to just 127,471 barrels, for which $23,847,744 was paid.
The U.S. correction helps explain some of the questions raised by experts, such as University of Texas researcher Jorge Piñón, who had shared his concerns with this newspaper about the storage capacity available for the fuel supposedly received by the private sector, since only the State, through Cimex and Cupet, has the capacity to maintain inventories of the size previously reported.
The quantity reported for July pointed to figures incredibly higher than those Venezuela had sent to the Island at certain times during the era of Hugo Chávez
The quantity reported for July pointed to figures incredibly higher than those Venezuela had sent to the Island at certain times during the era of Hugo Chávez and before the state oil company Pdvsa’s reserves began to dwindle because of sanctions and the mismanagement of Nicolás Maduro. Before the first year that marked the turning point, 2017, Caracas exported around 90,000 barrels a day to the Island under the agreement, amounting to approximately 2.7 million barrels a month. That was far less than the 3.2 million that the United States mistakenly reported.
Since late January, when the United States ordered a total blockade on shipments of oil and petroleum products to Cuba, it has allowed American businesses to sell these products as long as the private sector is the intended recipient. On October 7, authorities revealed that they had halted 90 shipments destined for the sanctioned Cuban state-owned company Enetec, 71 of which were detected at Port Everglades in Florida and 19 at the port of Houston, Texas. In total, authorities seized 600,000 gallons of oil (2.27 million liters), valued at $2.8 million.
This newspaper has documented on numerous occasions, however, that fuel reaching Cuban private businesses ends up in the hands of the State, which purchases it from the importing micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises (mipymes). Last week, the Minister of Energy and Mines, Vicente de la O Levy, stated in an interview with Reuters that the quantities reaching the Island are negligible: “I would dare say that the amount entering the country does not even cover 3% of its fuel needs.”
Translated by Regina Anavy
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