Mexico overtook Venezuela to become Cuba’s top oil supplier in 2025, according to industry data, helping support the communist island as US President Donald Trump renewed his vow to strike Mexican cartels after capturing Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro.
Since ousting Maduro on Saturday, Trump has insisted he will “have to do something” about Mexican drug flows to the US and said the Cuban regime was “ready to fall” as “they got all of their income from the Venezuelan oil”.
But rising exports from Mexico’s leftwing government significantly boosted oil flows to Cuba last year, helping the island weather a sharp drop in Venezuelan crude shipments, according to the data from industry body Kpler.
“Venezuelan crude imports into Cuba have fallen and Mexico has emerged as the country’s primary crude supplier,” Victoria Grabenwöger, crude research analyst at Kpler, told the Financial Times.
Mexico exported an average of 12,284 barrels of oil per day (bpd) to Cuba last year, about 44 per cent of the island’s total crude imports and a 56 per cent increase on its 2024 shipments, according to figures from the trade data and ship-tracking company.
By contrast, Venezuela, long the biggest supplier to Cuba, exported 9,528 bpd or 34 per cent. Its exports to Cuba last year, similar to their 2024 level, were 63 per cent lower than in 2023.
The Trump administration in December publicly rebuked Mexico, its largest trading partner, for failing to play a “constructive regional role aligned with US foreign policy goals”.
The Kpler figure for Venezuela’s crude exports to Cuba aligned with data from TankerTrackers.com, an online service tracking crude shipments, which saw 9,720 bpd of oil exports from Venezuela to Cuba on average this year, co-founder Samir Madani told the FT.
That included oil transferred from a tanker seized by the US on December 10 at the start of what Trump has called his country’s “total blockade” on sanctioned tankers heading to and from Venezuela.
Since deposing Maduro, Trump has said the US is “in charge” of Venezuela and that US companies will revive the Caribbean nation’s oil industry.
Mexican state oil company Pemex said in a December US stock exchange filing that its Gasolinas Bienestar unit had sent 17,200 bpd of crude and 2,000 bpd of petroleum products to Cuba in the nine months to the end of September — higher than the figure reported by Kpler. Pemex said it complied “with applicable law” on the exports, worth $400mn.
Mexico has supported Cuba since the early days of Fidel Castro’s revolution. Besides its oil shipments, Mexico also employs brigades of Cuban doctors.
President Claudia Sheinbaum has so far managed to temper Trump’s threats by extraditing cartel leaders and clamping down on immigration.
But on Monday she slammed Maduro’s capture, saying “unilateral action and invasion cannot be the basis for international relations in the 21st century”. She said she had repeatedly refused Trump’s offers of military intervention against the cartels.
Sheinbaum said in December that Mexico’s oil shipments to Cuba “were done within a legal framework as a sovereign country . . . everything is legal”. Pemex officials would provide information in January, she added. The company declined further comment.
Meanwhile, Mexican oil exports to the US, which wants the country’s heavy crude for its Gulf of Mexico refineries, almost halved from June 2023 to October 2025, to 519,000 bpd. The fall is unrelated to the Cuba exports.
Cuba’s government faces a severe economic crisis, with tourist numbers falling, foreign exchange scarce and blackouts a near-daily occurrence.
Venezuela has long sent Cuba heavily discounted oil in exchange for counter-intelligence operatives and doctors. But as it sold more of its sanctioned crude on the black market, its oil exports to the island have plunged by nearly three-quarters since 2020, the Kpler data showed.
Russia provided about 15 per cent of Cuba’s crude imports in 2025 with Algeria adding some 6 per cent, Kpler said.
Venezuela’s state oil company, PDVSA, and Cuba’s energy ministry did not respond to requests for comment.
Mexicans Against Corruption and Impunity, a think-tank, last year reported from customs data that Mexico’s oil shipments to Cuba accelerated last summer before falling back after US pressure.
Data on Venezuelan crude shipments to Cuba could be under-represented because of the use of “dark fleet” ships that turn off tracking systems to travel incognito, said Jorge Piñón at the University of Texas Energy Institute.
Grabenwöger said all the Venezuelan vessel movements into Cuba captured by Kpler were “dark activity”, verified by satellite imagery.
Mexico has attracted recent US criticism for employing Cuban doctors under a programme from Havana that the Trump administration has blasted as a “coercive labour export scheme” that enriches the regime.
Sheinbaum, who has defended their use, has nurtured a fragile truce with Trump — largely by acquiescing on key demands.
“She caves to him on . . . drugs, immigration and security in general,” said Jorge Castañeda, a former Mexican foreign minister. “But that may be changing.”
Carlos Giménez, Mario Díaz-Balart and María Elvira Salazar, three Republican members of US Congress with Cuban roots, have increased criticism of Mexico — and the White House appears to have noticed.
Katherine Dueholm, principal deputy assistant secretary for western hemisphere affairs, last month lashed out at Mexico, telling a congressional sub-committee that Sheinbaum’s government “has frequently acted in ways that run counter to . . . US objectives”.
She urged Mexico “to reconsider” its stance on Cuba.
And with a pivotal free trade agreement between the US, Mexico and Canada due for review in 2026, Giménez warned of “serious consequences for trade between our countries” if Sheinbaum “continues to undermine US policy by sending oil to the murderous dictatorship in Cuba”.
Additional reporting by Joe Daniels in Bogotá
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