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Indian, Norwegian firms eye oil off Cuba's coast

By Carlos Batista.

HAVANA, 10 (AFP) - India's ONGC Videsh and Norway's Norsk Hydro (Oslo: NHY.OL - news) are joining forces with Spain's Repsol (Madrid: REP.MC - news) in a bid to find crude oil off Cuba in the Gulf of Mexico, diplomatic sources said.

The news comes as US lawmakers, with oil prices soaring, are grumbling about prospecting in Cuban waters while US environmental laws make it all but impossible for US firms to do so in nearby US waters.

US media have reported that China was involved in the prospecting but Cuba has not announced a Chinese deal.

The deal with ONGC Videsh and Norsk Hydro, to be signed officially in Havana May 23, technically is not a new contract.

"Those companies are joining the existing one with Repsol to share risks," a European diplomat told AFP privately.

Repsol has rights to six of the 59 prospecting areas the Cuban government has been auctioning off since 1999. It carried out its first drilling in 2004 and while oil was found, Repsol said the quality of that crude was not commercial grade.

Since then Repsol has been looking for partners to share the investment burden, and ONGC Videsh and Norsk Hydro each will be picking up 30 percent of the expenses, other sources said.

The Gulf's waters were divided into economic exclusion zones of the United States, Mexico and Cuba under a deal which is still in effect signed during the government of then-US president Jimmy Carter.

Among other companies with prospecting rights if not projects there are Canada's Sherrit International and Brazil's state oil giant Petrobras (PETR3.SA - news) .

Cuba has invited US firms to take part but the US economic embargo bars them from doing so.

Cuba produces about a third of the oil it consumes, with the rest imported under favorable terms from its key ally Venezuela.

The New York Times reported Tuesday that "With only modest energy needs and no ability of its own to drill, Cuba has negotiated lease agreements with China and other energy-hungry countries to extract resources for themselves and for Cuba.

"Cuba's drilling plans have been in place for several years, but now that China, India and others are involved and fuel prices are unusually high, a growing number of lawmakers and business leaders in the United States are starting to complain. They argue that the United States' decades-old ban against drilling in coastal waters is driving up domestic energy costs and, in this case, is giving two of America's chief economic competitors access to energy at the United States' expense," the Times reported.

Saudi king, Cuba's Castro among world's richest rulers: Forbes

NEW YORK, 5 (AFP) - Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah, Cuban President Fidel Castro, Monaco's Prince Albert II and Britain's Queen Elizabeth II are reportedly among the world's wealthiest rulers.

Featuring monarchs, presidents and other leaders, the Forbes magazine list is topped by Abdullah, 82, who became Saudi Arabia's sixth king in August 2005 and is worth an estimated 21 billion dollars, according to Forbes.

In second place, with 20 billion dollars, is 59-year-old Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah of Brunei, followed by the president of the United Arab Emirates, Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed al-Nahayan, 58, with 19 billion dollars.

Dubai's ruler, 56-year-old Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, came in fourth, with 14 billion dollars, followed by Prince Hans-Adam II of Liechtenstein, 61, with four billion dollars.

The new Monegasque ruler, Albert, 48, who took over rule of the tiny principality after his father's death last year, was in sixth place, with one billion dollars.

Castro, 79, came in seventh, with 900 million dollars credited to him by Forbes, which cited former Cuban officials as saying that Castro had skimmed profits from a Havana convention center, retail conglomerate Cimex and vaccine and pharmaceutical products firm Medicuba to amass his fortune. It noted, however, that "Castro, for the record, disagrees, insisting his personal net worth is zero."

Teodoro Obiang Nguema, the 63-year-old president of Equatorial Guinea, is next on the list, worth some 600 million dollars, according to Forbes.

Forbes said Obiang and his government deposited up to 700 million dollars in the US bank formerly known as Riggs Bank but noted that "Equatorial Guinea's embassy insists the money, which was released back to the country, belongs to the government."

"Attributing that money to President Obiang's personal wealth is like saying a person who runs a hospital is worth the amount of revenue the hospital generates," an embassy spokesperson told Forbes in an e-mail.

Obiang is followed by Britain's 80-year-old queen, Elizabeth, who is worth 500 million dollars -- not including Buckingham Palace, the crown jewels and some other heirlooms that "belong to the British nation" and are merely "entrusted to her care."

Rounding out the list is the Netherlands' Queen Beatrix, 68, who has 270 million dollars to her name.

Forbes acknowledged that the list was difficult to compile.

"These fortunes are derived from inheritances or positions of power. And the lines often blur between what is owned by the country and what is owned by the individual," it said.

"Even stickier: Proving a dictator controls funds and uses them for personal gain -- not for the country's benefit," Forbes said.

Cuban, Venezuelan Aid Streams Into Bolivia

By Fiona Smith, Associated Press Writer Sat May 6, 2006.

LA PAZ, Bolivia - Gladys Melani was nearly blind from cataracts. Juana Mamani was illiterate. Sharon Mayra didn't officially exist. What these three Bolivians had in common was poverty, and help from Cuba and Venezuela in solving their problems.

Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez have made a fast and extensive start in providing President Evo Morales' three-month-old left-wing government with humanitarian aid, winning the thanks of its beneficiaries as well as political points.

It's part of what Morales, in a veiled taunt to the Bush administration, calls an "axis of good."

Melani's cataracts were removed for free by one of some 700 Cuban doctors who have fanned out to the farthest corners of Bolivia. Cuban teaching materials are helping Mamani learn to read and write.

Technology from Venezuela got 17-year-old Mayra the ID card without which she couldn't travel abroad, vote, enter government buildings or collect a pension. An estimated 1 million poor Bolivians, nearly 10 percent of the population, are expected to get the same help.

Venezuela is also helping to set up 109 rural radio stations so Morales can spread his socialist gospel much as Chavez has done.

Morales, an Aymara Indian, won office in December in a landslide of discontent with the traditional ruling class. On April 29, he signed a "trade agreement of the people" with Castro and Chavez, a mostly symbolic alternative to free trade agreements Washington has reached with other Latin American countries.

Two days later, he decreed the nationalization of Bolivia's natural gas, an even more forceful assertion of state control of mineral resources than Chavez has taken with his nation's oil.

The United States remains Bolivia's single biggest foreign donor, contributing a bit less than half of the $360 million annually with which rich nations collectively pay 60 percent of the Bolivian government's bills.

But the Cuban and Venezuelan largesse has mounted as Morales continues to veer to the left. Last weekend, Venezuela offered an additional $130 million in two separate funds - one for social projects, another for infrastructure and development projects.

"What these doctors and workers have generated goes beyond cooperation and is more about inter-human relations," said Alberto Nogales, Bolivia's vice minister of health.

Critics see dangers.

Fernando Messmer, an opposition congressman and former foreign minister, says Venezuela could use the database set up for the ID cards to keep tabs on Bolivians.

He has no proof, but contends Venezuela and Cuba are concerned more with promoting Morales than helping the poor.

"It's dangerous because it's moving toward consolidating a totalitarian state," he said.

Venezuela's state energy company, meanwhile, has signed a contract to build an ethane, methane and propane plant in Bolivia, and Venezuelan experts are involved in the details of Morales' gas nationalization. Chavez has offered Bolivia diesel fuel that can be paid for with farm products such as soy.

Flush with petrodollars, Chavez has offered fuel at preferential rates to 13 Caribbean countries as well as some poor U.S. districts, and scholarships for Haitians.

Meanwhile the Cubans, who in Cold War times sent soldiers to fight in Angola and Nicaragua, have focused on bringing medicine and literacy to friendly neighbors, Venezuela included.

A literacy campaign modeled on the one Cuba ran in Venezuela aims to teach Bolivia's 720,000 illiterates to read and write in two years. Cuba has delivered 30,000 TV sets plus workbooks and videotapes for Bolivian volunteer teachers.

It is equipping 20 rural Bolivian hospitals, providing free eye surgery in three new ophthalmology centers, and offering to pay for 6,000 Bolivians to study in Cuba.

The Bolivian Medical Association objects, saying the country has 10,000 unemployed doctors of its own. But 75-year-old Gladys Melani feels only gratitude to the eye doctors at a newly-equipped center in La Paz.

"Thank God the Cuban doctors arrived with all their understanding and care. They operated on me, and thanks to them I can see, I can keep working," she said.

Morales' opponents accuse him of using the Venezuelan and Cuban aid programs to mobilize support in July 2 elections for an assembly to rewrite Bolivian's constitution - a pattern similar to that which helped Chavez consolidate power in Venezuela.

But independent political analyst Cayetano Llobet believes the fears are overblown.

"There's a prejudiced mentality in the middle class that believes we're practically being invaded by Cuba and Venezuela," he said. "I don't think it's that serious or alarming."

Weather service says smoke over Key West is from Cuba

KEY WEST, Fla. 8(AP) - Weather officials say smoke from Cuba is the likely cause of eye and throat irritation in Key West.

The National Weather Service says yesterday's smoke probably came from a sugar cane field near the small Cuban town of Cardenas.

Farmers there are burning the fields to get rid of dried crops.

Authorities say winds pushed the smoke directly toward Key West.

Officials say the smoke isn't harmful and was mostly gone by yesterday afternoon.

Repatriated Cubans Who Landed On Bridge Piling Expected Back Soon

WPLG Click10.com via Yahoo! News, May 3, 2006.

The Cuban government is expected to grant exit visas to 15 Cubans who fled the country, landed on an abandoned bridge piling in the Florida Keys and were returned to their homeland.

The migrants' case drew attention after the U.S. Coast Guard decided that the piling they landed on did not constitute dry land.

But a federal judge in February ordered U.S. officials to use their best efforts to help the Cubans return to the country.

In January, the Coast Guard rescued the Cubans from a piling holding up a section of the old Seven Mile Bridge. They had rafted their way from Cuba.

Under the "wet foot, dry foot" policy, Cubans who reach U.S. soil are generally allowed to stay, while those intercepted at sea are generally repatriated.

But the part of the old bridge piling that the Cubans touched is no longer connected to land.

Attorneys for the family of the Cubans sent back argued that the Coast Guard acted unreasonably in its interpretation of U.S. immigration policy.

Castro Touts Rosy Economic Outlook in Cuba

By Vanessa Arrington, Associated Press Writer Mon May 1, 2006.

HAVANA -Fidel Castro said on Monday that Cuba's economy grew at a rate of more than 12.5 percent in the past month, crediting the country's resilience in the face of the U.S. government's long-standing trade embargo.

"Thank you, Yankee empire, because you've made us grow, you've made us reach new heights," he said in a May Day speech of more than three hours. Those gathered in Havana's Plaza of the Revolution chanted "Fidel!" in response, and waved small paper Cuban flags.

Castro said the economy grew 11.8 percent in the first quarter of this year as compared to the same period in 2005. The current rate of growth has since surged to more than 12.5 percent, he said.

Cuba uses its own method to calculating economic growth that takes into account the country's vast social safety net and subsidized services.

That makes Cuba's growth figures difficult to compare with those of other countries, prompting the United Nation's Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean to leave the island's numbers out of its report last year.

Castro chastised the Bush administration for creating a transition plan for a post-Castro Cuba and accused the administration of threatening his country and its ally Venezuela with U.S. military exercises under way in the Caribbean. U.S. officials say the exercises have nothing to do with Cuba or Venezuela.

"I am curious to see what comes of their famous transition period, with war boats, aircraft carriers and submarines and ... assassination plans," he said.

Castro said that a Cuban-born California man accused of selling guns illegally from his home told the Los Angeles Times in a jailhouse interview last week that the weapons were supposed to be used in an attempt to oust the Cuban president in concert with the U.S. naval exercises.

A Pentagon spokesman and other military officials have denied the claims by 61-year-old Robert Ferro, who had stashed 1,571 firearms and some hand grenades in hidden rooms and compartments at his home in Upland, Calif.

Ferro "had as many arms as the mercenaries brought with them to Giron," Castro said, referring to the disastrous invasion of Cuba 45 years ago by a U.S.-trained exile army at the Bay of Pigs.

Ferro has claimed to be a member of Alpha 66, a violent anti-Castro group. A spokesman at the group's Miami headquarters has denied that Ferro was a member.

Castro also accused the American government of protecting Luis Posada Carriles, a Cuban-born militant he characterizes as the Western Hemisphere's worst terrorist.

Posada Carriles is being held in the United States on immigration charges. Cuba and Venezuela accuse him of masterminding the 1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner that killed 73 people. Posada Carriles has denied involvement in that crime.

Cuba's Communist Party Expels Member

By Anita Snow, Associated Press Writer Fri Apr 28, 2006.

HAVANA - Cuba's Communist Party leadership said Friday it has expelled one of its younger Politburo members for repeatedly failing to overcome "errors" such as abuse of authority and arrogance.

Cuban officials had once pointed with pride to Juan Carlos Robinson as an example of the island's young black leadership. Robinson, now 49, is from the eastern city of Santiago - Cuba's second largest city after Havana - and had been the party's first secretary for the Santiago Province since 1994.

But the Communist Party's daily newspaper Granma said Friday that Robinson had become "a lamentable and unusual case of the inability of a political cadre to overcome his errors."

Robinson's dismissal comes as Cuba is striving to build up its younger leadership to eventually take over for the original revolutionary leaders, many of whom are now in their 70s. President Fidel Castro will turn 80 in August and his brother and designated successor, Defense Minister Raul Castro, will turn 75 in June.

"Criticized, warned and exhorted more than once by the (party leadership) to overcome his failings, he pretended to recognize them and end them," Granma said. "But that wasn't what happened."

Robinson, Granma said, "had shown attitudes that were dishonest and incompatible with the conduct of a communist, let alone a cadre of the party."

Senator Proposes Legislation To Stop Cuba From Drilling Near Fla. Coast

WPLG Click10.com via Yahoo! News. Apr 28, 2006.

U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson (news, bio, voting record) was at the Biltmore Hotel on Friday to discuss legislation he has proposed to prevent Cuba from further oil drilling close to Florida's coast.

The Communist country has recently agreed to allow oil companies from Canada, China and Spain to begin exploring for oil off Cuba's north coast, about 45 miles from the Florida Keys, raising the specter of a disastrous oil spill.

Nelson, who has been outspoken about preventing U.S. oil companies from drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, told reporters that the threat of an oil spill "going right into the Florida Keys, into the coral reefs and then carrying right on up the east coast by the Gulf stream" could severely damage Florida's tourism-driven economy and possibly the restoration efforts in the Everglades.

Nelson is trying to avert the threat by not extending an agreement with Cuban President Fidel Castro that sets a maritime boundary between the U.S. and Cuba.

"I've asked the administration not to extend it unless they get an agreement from Cuba that will protect Florida and the Florida straits," Nelson said. Local 10's Michael Putney said that Kirby Jones, president of the U.S.-Cuba Trade Association, predicts that the Castro regime will laugh at Nelson's proposal and that, like it or not, Cuba is a sovereign country and free to do business with other countries as it pleases.

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