While Pope Francis is applauded for helping broker this week’s U.S.-Cuba accord, a key motive for Cuba is Venezuela’s diminishing oil gifts to its biggest ally. Venezuela sent about 100,000 barrels a day to Cuba last year in exchange for medical personnel as part of a regional subsidy program to promote the government’s socialist message. While there’s no official data for shipments to Cuba this year, anecdotal evidence suggests volumes have already slumped to about 70,000 barrels a day, Moody’s wrote Dec. 16. The regional aid is set to be scaled back further as oil’s biggest rout in a decade undermines a socialist revolution that transformed Venezuela over the past 15 years under Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro , according to Eurasia Group and EnergyNomics. The commitment by Cuba and the U.S. to normalize relations opens the door for the island nation to buy more oil on the open […]