The Canadian power plant contributed about 816 gigawatt-hours in 2024 to the national electricity system and allowed the reconnection of the thermoelectric plants.
14ymedio, Havana, 20 March 2025 — The gas power plants of the Canadian mining giant Sherritt in Boca de Jaruco (Mayabeque) and Varadero (Matanzas) were key pieces in returning electricity to Cuba during the most recent blackout. Without those two supports, the precarious frame of thermoelectric plants, stations and generators that the authorities call – not without irony, after four disconnections in less than six months – the national electrical system (SEN) would not have returned to the ring.
For businessman William Pitt, from whose family Fidel Castro confiscated in 1960 several properties with mining value, the data has a personal connotation: “We are contributing to the illumination of Cuba with the theft of our mines,” he tells 14ymedio. The Government pays Sherritt for the electricity production of the Jaruco and Varadero plants with minerals extracted from the confiscated mines in the east of the country.
Pitt, who has continuously denounced the plunder of Sherritt and its properties by the Cuban State, also underlines the fact that Cuba depends on a foreign company to solve a serious energy crisis like the one that occurred on March 14, when the disconnection of the SEN was announced. This “significant” dependence was admitted by the company in its annual report: Sherritt contributed about 816 gigawatt-hours (GWh) to the SEN in 2024.
The scourge of Boca de Jaruco is the Guiteras itself, because of the frequency with which it breaks down
Thanks to the Boca de Jaruco, Pitt points out, it was possible to start the western system. However, the multiple deficiencies of the western power plants – the most important in Cuba is the Antonio Guiteras, in Matanzas – cause the Boca de Jaruca to overload when the connection is established and its disconnection mechanism is activated. It is an automatic strategy “to prevent the plant from being damaged,” he adds.
The scourge of Boca de Jaruco is the Guiteras itself, due to the frequency with which it breaks down. Its disconnection in fact, caused the December blackout. Pitt does not rule out that the damage to other power plants in the area, such as the Mariel or Santa Cruz del Norte – usually mentioned in the litany of breakdowns reported by the Electric Union (UNE) – contributes to the overload.
A similar situation affects the Sherritt plant in Varadero, indispensable to start the eastern section of the SEN. If the Guiteras is the one that affects the reconnection of the West the most, it is the Felton plant, in Holguín, that fulfills that disastrous role in the East.
Sherritt does not come to the aid of the regime out of solidarity, Pitt warns. Every megawatt, every start-up maneuver, every solution comes with a price that Cuba pays in minerals, since it lacks money to pay off its debts. “Sherritt has had to resort to extracting even more minerals from the mines of Moa (Holguín) without having to pay the Government extra and thus considers those minerals as partial payment of Cuba’s debt. But that’s not enough.”
Every megawatt, every starting maneuver, each solution comes with a price that Cuba pays in minerals
Pitt, who claims that Castro’s maneuvers against his family wrecked the Cuban mining sector, does not lose sight of the historical roots of the situation: the nickel and cobalt that Sherritt extracts from Moa, and with which the regime negotiates, belongs to his family. It is “mineral stolen from mines that belong to my sisters and me,” he asserts.
The regime is not the only one that goes through a financial squeeze. Sherritt, as reflected between the lines of its annual report, is “on the verge of bankruptcy,” according to Pitt. The company is facing, says the businessman, an “unsolvable problem” at the end of this month, when it holds its shareholders meeting.
“The fall in the price of nickel and cobalt in the world market, together with the economic and political conditions that exist in Cuba, have caused Sherritt losses year after year.” Faced with this scenario, shareholders will have to vote for the best solution to get rid of the financial disaster in the next two years.
The initiatives that have so far been useful, such as the Cobalt Exchange – a pact that allows the exploitation of mines as a means to compensate for the Government’s million-dollar debt – or the improvement of some of its facilities, are not enough to avoid bankruptcy, Pitt says. “We have not been able to get Cuba to pay,” he explains, and with Sherritt’s constant support for Energas – its Cuban partner – and from blackout to blackout, the debt continues to grow.
“Sherritt’s directors recognize very well the possibility that the company will dissolve and cease to exist”
“Sherritt’s directors recognize very well the possibility that the company will dissolve and cease to exist, and they are desperately trying to invent some way to avoid bankruptcy. Not being able to do so with profits from its businesses, the directors have decided to prolong Sherritt’s corporate life by extending the payment schedule,” Pitt explains.
The company itself has the obligation to pay off a debt of 220 million dollars before 2026. Through a complicated restructuring mechanism, its managers hope to be able to extend the deadline until 2031.
It is just a “patch,” explains the businessman, and its success depends on factors that are not in the hands of Sherritt, such as global prices for nickel and cobalt. Or an even more difficult panorama to predict: the future of Cuba.
Translated by Regina Anavy
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