at 10:23 AM Sunday, April 17, 2011
From today's Miami Herald:
Less than 75 miles off the Florida Keys, Cuba's plan to explore for oil and gas in waters even deeper than BP's Deepwater Horizon well has U.S. officials on alert [...]
"Houston is 900 miles from where the well is going to be deployed and equipment could be there in a matter of hours, but it won't be available because we haven't sat down with Cuba," said Jorge Piñon, an energy expert and visiting research fellow at the Cuban Research Institute at Florida International University [...]
Critics of further engagement with Cuba argue that Cuba has proposed offshore drilling for more than a decade without delivering.
"We've seen this dog-and-pony show for 10 years and the fact remains, there's no drilling," said Mauricio Claver-Carone, director of a leading pro-embargo lobby, the U.S. Cuba Democracy political action committee. He contends the plans are part of a propaganda campaign by the regime to attract investors and to secure the oil industry's support for joining the lobby against the embargo. The embargo has already affected Cuba's operations: It had to secure a rig that didn't violate the U.S. law that prevents vessels with more than 10 percent of U.S. parts from operating in Cuba.
Claver-Carone suggested that if the rig — now in Singapore — approaches Cuba, there'd be time for Congress to make it even more difficult and expensive for Repsol to proceed. Florida lawmakers have already filed legislation aiming to block Cuba by making it more difficult for foreign oil companies to do business there.
"I don't understand why anyone would want to facilitate the creation of a petro-dictatorship 90 miles away," he said.
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