From the BBC
October 17, 2008
The state-owned Cuban oil company says the country may have more than 20bn barrels of oil in its offshore fields – more than double the previous estimate.
Cubapetroleo’s exploration manager said drilling in the offshore wells would begin as early as the middle of 2009.
Such reserves would place Cuba among the top 20 oil producing nations.
Cubapetroleo’s estimates are based on comparisons to known oil reserves found within similar geological structures off the coasts of the US and Mexico.
The company said Cuba had undersea geology “very similar” to that surrounding Mexico’s giant Cantarell and Poza Rica oil fields in the Bay of Campeche.
October 17, 2008 at 10:46 pm
One question that appears to have been missed in discussion of the potential US role in Cuba’s oil sector is whether Cuba either needs or wants US involvement in exploiting her oil (or any other) resources. Why would she if one takes into account the hypocrisy and lies which underpin US (and British) involvement in Iraq and her oil resources ? Why expose herself to attempts of economic dominance that successive US governments and its crony relationships with oil companies have employed elsewhere in the world ? Cuba has stood resolutely and maintained her sovereignty and dignity against incessant US aggression for decades. She has the absolute right to decide the manner in which her own resources are used for the benefit of her own people. The USA blew the opportunity nearly 50 years ago. Get with it, there’s a new order: China buys US government paper to fund more consumption by the USA of products made in China – where’s the dignity in that ? The leaders of US financial institutions have been shown to be self-serving and self-aggrandising without humility (how many have fallen on their own swords to acknowledge the hardship and burden they are responsible for loading onto the shoulders of US tax payers ?). The USA becomes increasingly dependent on foreign sources of investment to sustain (a deficit driven economy): where is the self-respect in that ? The USA now needs the rest of the world more than the rest of the world needs the USA. Whither the American Dream ?
October 17, 2008 at 12:30 pm
This is terrible news. It means that we are now have a new member of the Axis of Evil (Iran, Iraq, and North Korea) 90 miles from the Florida Keys. We are going to have invade Cuba AND Venezuela.
But our military is stretched to the breaking point already fighting evildoers in Iraq and preparing to fight them in Iran. How are we going to thwart all these enemies lapping out our shores and threatening the (profligate and energy intensive) American lifestyle? I don’t know what we’re going to do.
(Global warming? Remember, the evidence linking global warming to our extraction of hydrocarbons from the Earth’s crust and burning them is STILL inconclusive. That’s according to expert climatologist, Sarah Palin.)