For now, it looks like the Cuban economy will be spared a post-Soviet shock. With the Apr. 14 election of interim Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro to finish out the six-year term of his mentor, the late Hugo Chávez, Cuba will not face a drastic cutoff of cheap oil from Venezuela currently the umbilical cord keeping the island’s economy afloat.

Over the years, Hugo Chávez who died Mar. 5 after a protracted battle against cancer shored up Cuba by providing the island with 92,000 barrels of oil a day worth $3.2 billion annually under generous terms.

But now that Maduro has been officially certified as the winner, Venezuela’s strong ties with Havana will continue for the time being.

“They will probably be thinking that they now have perhaps a maximum of five years of Venezuelan subsidies left,” retired British diplomat Paul Hare told AP, “because if the trend continues moving against him, as I think is likely, this will be the last term even if they are able to continue all the subsidies for that period. The clock is ticking for that relationship.”

Hare, a former envoy to both Venezuela and Cuba who now lectures at Boston University, noted the speed with which Raúl Castro congratulated Maduro.

In his message, published on the front page of Communist newspaper Granma, Raúl said: “In the name of the government and people of Cuba, I congratulate you on this transcendental triumph, which demonstrates the fortitude of the ideas and work of Commander Hugo Chávez.”

But during the just-concluded electoral campaign, the threat to Cuba was palpable.

Opposition candidate Henrique Capriles, who had lost to Chávez with a respectable 44% of the vote in last October’s presidential election, vowed publicly that if he won, “not another drop of oil will go toward financing the government of the Castros.”

In the end, Capriles received 49.1% of the final vote tally, compared to 50.7% for Maduro a result which at press time was still being protested by Capriles supporters.

Seven people died and more than 130 were arrested in post-election violence after Venezuela’s national election authority refused the opposition’s demand for a recount. Manuel Kohn, the New York-based founder of anti-Chávez exile group SAVE, said there’s no question “Capriles would have cut off Chávez‘s oil giveaway to Cuba and other politically motivated oil deals like Petrocaribe.”

Countries benefiting from Petrocaribe’s liberal payment terms include the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Haiti and most of the English-speaking Caribbean islands.

But at least one academic argued that Capriles wouldn’t have totally pulled the plug on Venezuelan aid to Cuba.

“I would not expect shipments to end completely, as Capriles, at least in the short-term, [would have wanted] to retain the barter agreement under which Cuba provides doctors and nurses in exchange for oil shipments,” said Mark P. Jones, an expert on Venezuelan politics and a political science professor at Houston’s Rice University.

“But this would at best result in only about 25,000 barrels a day instead of the current 100,000, which would have [had] a devastating effect on the Cuban economy. It is likely that he [would] allow for the continuation of the barter agreement with Cuba, albeit renegotiated to more accurately reflect the true value of the services provided by the Cuban doctors and nurses [which is overvalued in the current agreement].”

Jones’ comments on the possible modification of Venezuela’s oil deal with Cuba cannot be totally dismissed under Maduro, at least somewhere down the road. Economic pressures may compel him to at review at least portions of it.

Among those pressures: high inflation, which Bloomberg expects to hit 26% this year, second only to Argentina in all of Latin America, and overall GDP growth of only 1.7% this year, compared to 5.6% in 2012.

“People and companies are desperate for dollars in Venezuela to do their business and pay for their imports and parts and supplies, and it’s hard to explain to outsiders the difficulties you have trying to change your bolívars into dollars,” Russ Dallen, managing partner at Caracas Capital Markets, recently told the Wall Street Journal.

Currency shortages have already fueled Venezuela’s poor economic performance.

Omar Bautista, executive president of the Venezuelan Chamber of Manufacturers of Automotive Products, last month told reporters that his sector now works at only 50% of its capacity.