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Page added on July 13, 2012
Plan to Drill for Cuban Oil Faces Delay
A Russian state oil company will delay drilling its first exploratory well off the northern coast of Cuba, about 180 miles from Florida, after apparently struggling to find a suitable drilling rig that would not violate U.S. sanctions.
Cuba produces little oil now, but petroleum experts say the country’s northern coastal waters could hold reserves, which may help revive the island’s economy and ease its dependence on oil imported from Venezuela.
The Russian company, Zarubezhneft, said in a statement on Wednesday that it had planned to drill in August but now planned to start in November.
Half a dozen companies have signed deals to work in Cuban waters on projects that are alarming for the U.S. authorities because they are close to the United States but out of reach of its safety regulators. In places, Cuba’s maritime border is 50 miles from the U.S. coast.
The update on the Russian company’s plans came during a visit to Moscow on Wednesday by Raúl Castro, Cuba’s leader and the brother of Fidel Castro. Raúl Castro is on a tour of former Communist allies, seeking investment. He stopped in Russia after visiting China and Vietnam. In Russia, he met with President Vladimir V. Putin, who asked that he relay the country’s best wishes to his brother.
Zarubezhneft, a small state-owned company, obtained the exploration rights to four blocks off Cuba three years ago. In June, it contracted with a Cyprus-based drilling operator, Songa Offshore, for a rig.
Rigs have posed a challenge for oil companies operating in Cuba. They must have sufficiently few U.S.-made parts to avoid violating the trade embargo the United States imposed on Cuba 50 years ago. Yet the United States is a leader in the offshore drilling industry.
Songa Offshore, a company with ties to the Norwegian oil industry, once operated from offices in Houston but has since relocated to Singapore and Cyprus, according to its Web site.
After it contracted for the Songa rig, the Russians took the added precaution of hiring a third-party auditing company to confirm that the machine had fewer than 10 percent U.S.-made parts, Zarubezhneft said in its statement. That question settled, the rig is now sailing from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Cuba.
The Russians plan to drill at a site called Block L, near the Cuban coastal town of Cayo Santa Maria.
3 Comments on "Plan to Drill for Cuban Oil Faces Delay"
BillT on Sat, 14th Jul 2012 12:48 am
Ah, other drillers are dangerous but BP isn’t? How two-faced our government has gotten. But that is the cost of sanctions against even your neighbors. It comes back to bite you. The Empire is cut out of sources close to home by it’s stupidity.
Arthur on Sat, 14th Jul 2012 9:43 am
I am amazed that Castro is still in place after all these years and did not get the Khadaffi treatment by the totalitarian humanists in Washington. The fact that he hardly has oil and only sugar probably saved him. He should be carefull, finding oil in his coastal waters probably would spell the end of him.
Arthur on Sat, 14th Jul 2012 6:07 pm
Come to think of it, it is not that the US government did not try to topple Castro. Bay of Pigs… Oh yes and there was:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods
They idea was to smash a so-called hijacked remote controlled plane without passengers, pretending it was carrying passengers. The idea was to provoke anger among the American public in order to provoke an invasion. And this was not some shady CIA backroom operation, no it was approved by the joint chief of staff of the US army. The only reason it was not carried out was because pres. Kennedy rejected it. The same guy that got killed the following year. The idea probably originated from Eisenhower.
Remote controlled planes used in a false flag attack… hmmm