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Oil may grease attitudes
toward Cuba trade policy
By Elana Schor. The
Hill, June 7, 2006.
The imminent release of a new Bush administration
status report on U.S.-Cuban relations is
re-energizing the anti-embargo lobby, which
believes the skyrocketing price of oil could
provide a winning angle in its fight to
relax trade sanctions on the communist island
nation.
When the Commission for Assistance to a
Free Cuba issued its first policy recommendations
at the president's behest two years ago,
it resulted in stricter curbs on educational
travel and Cuban-Americans' ability to send
money home. But the National Foreign Trade
Council (NFTC), its affiliated business
coalition USA Engage and the newly independent
Freedom to Travel Campaign are stumping
for a milder report this time around.
The groups have found a new weapon for
their campaign to loosen the trade embargo
that has stood against Havana since the
Kennedy administration. Oil companies from
Norway, India, Spain and China (whose government-controlled
petroleum group set off protectionist alarms
last year with its bid to purchase Unocal)
recently have signed drilling deals to explore
Cuba's offshore waters.
"The embargo has the effect of turning
our entire back yard over to other countries
- China, India," USA Engage director
Jake Colvin said. "Cupec [Cuba's state-owned
oil company] is certainly looking for partners,
and it's better that we are there than that
we are not."
With the appropriations cycle heating up
in the House this month, the annual ritual
of amendments offered to ease sanctions
on Cuba is sure to spark a fierce debate.
Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), a longtime opponent
of the embargo, has raised the stakes with
a bill that would allow U.S. oil and gas
giants to profit from Cuban reserves and
with a release from the House Cuba Working
Group, which he co-chairs.
Flake and many on K Street are counting
on the fearsome specter of China's quest
for oil to raise support for the Cuba drilling
bill. Among those backing the Senate version,
sponsored by Rep. Larry Craig (R-Idaho),
is Energy and Natural Resources Committee
Chairman Pete Domenici (R-N.M.), whom NFTC
President Bill Reinsch touted as a powerful
ally.
Cuban waters contain somewhere between
4.6 billion and 9.3 billion barrels of oil,
according to estimates by the U.S. Geological
Survey, a figure comparable to the low end
of available resources in the GOP-coveted
Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR),
in Alaska.
"It defies common sense not to explore
our options over in Cuban waters,"
Flake spokesman Matthew Specht said. "When
we get serious about ANWR, why can't we
get serious about this?"
Lawmakers working to preserve tight restrictions
on Cuban trade and travel remain influential
in both chambers, however, particularly
in the Florida delegation, and Cuban-Americans
committed to isolating Cuban dictator Fidel
Castro have revitalized their political
activity through the U.S.-Cuba Democracy
PAC. Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez,
a Cuban émigré who leads the
White House's commission along with Secretary
of State Condoleezza Rice, has given to
the PAC in recent years.
Mauricio Claver-Carone, one of the PAC's
25 directors and a pro-embargo lobbyist
for the Cuba Democracy Public Advocacy Corp.,
dismissed the political value of Cuba's
oil wealth as a red herring.
"Energy exploration is a big smokescreen
issue," Claver-Carone said. "It
has sucked the whole Cuba policy community
in, and I think it's something the Jeff
Flakes of the world wanted to do on purpose."
Yet Claver-Carone acknowledged the allure
of alleviating sky-high gas prices to Republicans.
He said anti-Castro activists are not expecting
oil exploration to pop up in the administration's
new report, which officials had expected
to release last week.
"I think it will backfire because
the oil industry is pretty radioactive in
Congress right now, at least from a lobbying
perspective," Claver-Carone said. Instead,
he is bracing for the report to address
limits on religious travel to Cuba, now
regulated more lightly than trips home to
visit family members.
The U.S.-Cuba PAC has already given $347,000
this cycle, including contributions to four
senior House Republicans on the appropriations
panel with jurisdiction over the Treasury
Department, a key enforcer of the embargo.
That puts the PAC on pace to more than double
its giving for the 2004 elections.
Anti-sanctions lobbyists claim widespread
support for the Cuba drilling bill among
oil and gas companies, but industry sources
were hesitant to confirm this.
"In general, we think it's good when
anyone tries to expand energy production,"
said Bill Bush, a spokesman for the American
Petroleum Institute (API), the oil industry's
trade association. The API has left the
question of a public stance on Cuba drilling
to its individual members, several of whom
attended a controversial February meeting
with Cuban officials in Mexico City that
was briefly broken up at the Bush administration's
request.
One of those Mexico attendees, ExxonMobil,
is "obviously interested in exploring
for oil anywhere that U.S. law allows us
to," said company spokesman Russ Roberts.
"Right now Cuba is a country the U.S.
is not doing business in. … I'm not
sure we would want to go as far as making
a comment on whether we would want the law
to change."
Valero, a Texas oil refiner also reportedly
present in Mexico, has no position on the
Cuba drilling legislation, according to
a corporate spokeswoman.
The Freedom to Travel Campaign last month
formally split from its parent think tank,
the Center for International Policy, and
will continue organizing congressional trips
to Cuba even as the uncertainty of lobbying-reform
negotiations clouds privately sponsored
travel. Campaign Director Sarah Stephens
said members not usually considered foes
of the embargo, "people who never vote
with us," are expressing interest in
next month's Havana trip.
But Cuban-American members have their own
current-events hook to play up in Iranian
president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's coming visit
with Castro, whom Ahmadinejad considers
a crucial international partner.
"All the problems we're having with
Iran right now, and we're going to help
one of its proudest allies just 90 miles
from our shore?" said Thomas Bean,
communications director for Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart
(R-Fla.), one of the Capitol's most vocal
proponents of strengthening the embargo.
Other pro-sanctions voices include Rep.
Lincoln Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.), Rep. Ileana
Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), considered the front-runner
to chair the House International Relations
Committee next year, and Florida Sens. Mel
Martinez (R.) and Bill Nelson (D). Nelson
and Martinez both have countered the Senate's
Cuban drilling bill with measures preventing
foreigners involved in Cuban exploration
from entering the country.
© 2006 The Hill
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