|
Analysis: Is Cuban oil
fact or fallacy?
By Carmen J. Gentile, UPI
Energy Correspondent. September 19, 2006.
MIAMI, Sept. 19 (UPI) -- Cuba could be
on the verge of solving its energy woes
and perhaps even one day join the ranks
of the world's oil-producing elite, Venezuelan
President Hugo Chavez suggested somewhat
wryly during a recent world leaders summit
in Havana.
Speaking at least week's Non-Aligned Movement
Summit in Havana, Chavez told reporters
that Cuba's potentially lucrative offshore
oil reserves could one day catapult the
island onto the world petroleum stage and
maybe even earn the country a place in the
Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.
"Fidel is headed for OPEC," said
Chavez jokingly during the meeting drawing
representatives from 118 countries and more
than 50 world leaders. "He is finding
oil."
Though it seems unlikely that Cuba would
be invited into OPEC based solely on speculation
about what might reside beneath its ocean
floors, there are indications that its offshore
deposits are the world's next great untapped
source of oil.
According to the U.S. Geological Survey,
some 4.6 billion barrels of crude oil and
9.8 trillion cubic feet of natural gas just
may well be lurking below of the ocean floor
of the Northern Cuban basin. The reserves
are said to possibly rival the estimated
reserves in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife
Refuge.
That kind of crude would more than meet
Cuba's daily oil intake -- about 205,000
bpd -- and provide enough excess to transform
the country from being dependent on Chavez's
largesse to a global player on the oil market.
Several nations are already banking on
Cuba'a oil potential. China has invested
an estimated $1 billion in Cuba with the
intention of exploring its offshore deposits.
Last week, India's state-run oil company
penned a deal with Cuba to explore off shore
as well.
Some analysts are skeptical about the hype
surrounding the supposed untapped oil wealth
that could springboard Cuba from impoverished
communist state to self-sufficiency and
financial windfall.
"Cuba's oil potential is just that,
potential," Larry Birns, director of
the Washington-based Council on Hemispheric
Affairs think tank, told United Press International.
He noted that senior Cuban officials are
often reluctant to speak out about the potential
deposits until there is further proof regarding
their size. Others share the COHA director's
skepticism.
"It's been a big smoke screen for
a long time ... the Soviets used to say
there were large deposits off the shores
of Cuba, though it hasn't been proven,"
Maurcio Claver-Carone, a member of the U.S.-Cuba
Democracy Political Action Committee, told
UPI recently.
Claver-Carone also contends that Cuban
leader Fidel Castro used the basin as a
means of promoting foreign investment in
Cubapetroleo, Cuba's state-owned oil company.
Meanwhile, some U.S. lawmakers, lured by
the idea of a bountiful oil supply so near
American shores, have proposed waiving the
decades-long embargo against Cuba to allow
U.S. oil companies to bid on extraction
projects.
Among them is Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho,
who earlier this year introduced a bill
that would lift the Cuban embargo and allow
U.S. companies to do business with Cubapetroleo.
The senator argues that while U.S. firms
are prohibited from doing business with
Castro, and from exploring fields off the
shores of southern Florida due to environmental
restrictions, Cuba is already planning its
own offshore exploration and cultivating
ties with countries such as China.
Cuba is only 90 miles from the United States
at its closest part. An agreement brokered
in 1977 splits the waters between the two
nations in half. The United States does
not permit drilling on its half, though
Castro is reportedly eager to explore Cuban
waters.
"The bottom line is that Cuba will
develop its oil fields within 45 miles of
our shore. We can sit by and complain, only
to watch rigs go out and start extracting
oil, or we get involved," Craig told
UPI in June.
| 
