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14ymedio finds cooking gas cylinders selling for 80 dollars, cash only, in Sancti Spíritus
State company Cupet is offering new 20-pound cylinders at 80 dollars at three outlets in the city of Sancti Spíritus, which had gone without regular state sales of cooking gas since October 2025, the newspaper found.
The state company Unión Cuba-Petróleo (Cupet) is charging up to 80 dollars for a new 20-pound cooking gas cylinder, filled and with its fittings, at its main office in the city of Sancti Spíritus and at two other outlets, in the Colón and Los Olivos neighbourhoods, 14ymedio found. Payment is demanded in cash and buyers must sign a waiting list and wait their turn depending on availability.
At the Cupet outlet on Santa Elena street, in the same city, a cylinder is offered for 55 dollars if the customer hands over an empty one to be refilled, a sale restricted to health workers, bank employees and staff of previously authorised workplaces.
Cuba's minimum wage is 3,210 pesos a month, about 3.65 dollars at the informal exchange rate of 880 pesos to the dollar recorded that day, according to the newspaper: an 80-dollar cylinder costs almost 22 times a month's minimum wage, and the 55-dollar one about 15 times.
Sancti Spíritus had gone without regular state sales of cooking gas since October 2025, and the interruption drove up the black market, where 10-kilogram cylinders came to be offered for as much as 70,000 pesos. This month, two people from the province were sentenced to 12 and 10 years in prison for stealing cylinders from more than 20 homes, and two others to two and a half years and two years for taking part in reselling them.
The resumption coincides with complaints about a similar situation on the Isle of Youth, where residents say on social media that Cupet is selling cylinders there for 89 dollars. The Cuban government has presented the sale of cooking gas in hard currency as a way to finance fuel imports; in June, the United States added Cupet to its list of sanctioned entities over its ties to the military conglomerate Gaesa.
Sources: 14ymedio
Data updated: 2026-11-01T04:15:00.000Z