LatinNews Daily - 13 October 2026

*Cuba’s government has approved new regulations updating the legal framework for oil and gas activities which expand the participation of “new actors and management models across the sector's entire value chain”. In a press conference, Pedro Abigantus León, the director of business and investment for the energy and mining ministry, explained that the decree, which was published in the official gazette yesterday, “reaffirms state control” over the sector but “ratifies and expands” the sector’s “opening to foreign investment” with “legal security, transparency and compatibility with national sovereignty”. According to Cuba’s state mouthpiece Granma, this will entail the use of “production-sharing contract modalities, oil concessions, oil service contracts, and other association modalities provided for in the Cuban legal system”. The legal changes are in line with the economic reform package unveiled in June by Havana amid efforts to ease the maximum pressure campaign applied by the US government led by President Donald Trump to push for the island’s economic and political opening, which includes an effective fuel blockade and sanctions targeting the sector which have exacerbated Cuba’s existing energy crisis.