Cuba learnt to be self-sufficient after collapse of Soviet Union

Cuba now produces more of its own crude petroleum and gas than it did before it lost crucial oil subsidies with the collapse of the Soviet Union a decade ago, plunging the island nation into a severe economic crisis.
Cuba this year is projected to produce 2.8 mm tons of petroleum, Economics and Planning Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez said. Before the Soviet break-up, Cuba produced only 1 mm tpy of its own petroleum, he said.
The minister said that Cuba also has moved into the extraction and production of other energy products that were "practically non-existent" here in the 1980s, such as natural gas. Cuba is projected to produce 600 bn cm of natural gas for domestic consumption this year, he said.
During the decade-long austerity program known here as the "special period," Cuba has been forced to learn to be self-sufficient, producing many of the products it once received free or heavily subsidised from its former communist allies in the Soviet bloc.