Cu­ba’s fu­el short­ages have in­creased dra­mat­i­cal­ly with au­thor­i­ties sus­pend­ing ac­tiv­i­ties, in­clud­ing a con­cert by the coun­try’s na­tion­al sym­pho­ny, as well as ra­tioning gaso­line sales and mov­ing some uni­ver­si­ties’ class­es on­line.

Cubans have ex­pe­ri­ences short­ages of all kinds of goods amid the re­cent eco­nom­ic cri­sis but the can­cel­la­tion of ac­tiv­i­ties be­cause of fu­el short­ages had not been re­port­ed pre­vi­ous­ly. The can­cel­la­tions come fol­low­ing days of long lines to get gaso­line at fill­ing sta­tions.

Ex­perts say the lack of gaso­line and diesel is not due to a lack of crude oil — Cu­ba pro­duces about half of what it needs and buys the rest from oth­er coun­tries - but to the dif­fi­cul­ties re­fin­ing it.

“There is no lack of crude oil in Cu­ba,” said Jorge Piñón, se­nior re­search fel­low at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas at Austin’s En­er­gy In­sti­tute.

He said Venezuela is sell­ing Cu­ba a sim­i­lar amount of crude or even slight­ly more than it did last year. Cu­ba has al­so re­ceived oil from Rus­sia, though de­tails of these agree­ments are un­known.

Piñón said Cu­ba in April al­so re­ceived two tankers from Mex­i­can state oil com­pa­ny Pe­mex car­ry­ing 300,000 bar­rels of crude oil each.

He blamed he short­ages on tech­ni­cal pro­duc­tion prob­lems in the re­finer­ies, which were built in 1957.

Cuban au­thor­i­ties have not giv­en a spe­cif­ic rea­son for the short­ages, but in pre­vi­ous days have men­tioned dif­fi­cul­ties with “in­puts,” which Piñón said could re­fer to an ad­di­tive Cu­ba gets from Iran need­ed to re­fine Venezuela’s heavy crude.

The fu­el short­ages start­ed be­ing crit­i­cal this week­end.

On Mon­day af­ter­noon, the com­mer­cial di­rec­tor of the state-owned Cubapetroleo, Lidia Ro­dríguez, warned there are low lev­els of “re­fine­able crude.”

Mean­while, au­thor­i­ties in Vil­la Clara said in state­ment pub­lished on the gov­ern­ment’s Face­book page that fu­el will on­ly be sold to dri­vers of cars li­censed to op­er­ate as pub­lic car­ri­ers and pro­vide ba­sic ser­vices, i.e. am­bu­lances, and ve­hi­cles used in emer­gen­cies or buri­als.

Uni­ver­si­ties in the provinces of Vil­la Clara, Hol­guín, Sanc­ti Spíri­tus and Uni­ver­si­dad Agraria de La Ha­bana said that start­ing Mon­day class­es will be tem­porar­i­ly on­line.

On Sun­day, a con­cert by the Cuban Na­tion­al Sym­pho­ny in the cap­i­tal’s main the­ater was can­celed due to lack of fu­el.