Mexico will help, provide oil to Cuba, Lopez Obrador says

Reuters
Mon, October 16, 2023 

FILE PHOTO: Mexico's President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and Chile's President Gabriel Boric (not pictured) deliver a statement to the media at La Moneda government palace in Santiago, Chile, September 10, 2023. REUTERS/Ivan Alvarado/

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexico will help Cuba, including providing it with oil, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said on Monday.

Mexico began regularly shipping crude oil to Cuba at the end of the first quarter of this year. Since then, it has shipped about 2.8 million barrels to the island, which suffers from frequent power outages and fuel shortages, according to independent data.

"However we can help the people of Cuba, we're going to do it," said Lopez Obrador in a regular press conference.

He said Mexico did not have to request permission from any foreign government to aid Cuba, which he said suffered from an "inhumane and unjust" embargo.

"If they tell us, 'Sell us oil, because we don't have any way of getting it,' of course we're going to do so," Lopez Obrador said, ruling out that the aid could cause frictions with the United States.

Cuba was put under a U.S. economic embargo after Fidel Castro's 1959 revolution.

(Reporting by Ana Isabel Martinez; Editing by Anthony Esposito)