Cuba's new oil industry

Thursday, 13 November, 2003, 18:30 GMT
By Tom Fawthrop
reporting from Havana, Cuba

Cuba's fast-improving energy sector - with domestic oil production now at 4.1m tons a year and accounting for 80% of the country's energy needs - is expected to eventually ease the country's current economic woes.

Food and other consumer goods are strictly rationed
The Cuban economy has been crippled since the end of Soviet oil subsidies in 1990, which also spelled the of subsidised sugar exports to the USSR.

Since then, the economy has grown increasingly dependent on tourism in order to gain hard currency to pay for needed imports, forcing strict rationing.

But with domestic oil and natural gas production is growing at 10% a year, Cuba has begun to meet most of its energy needs without the need for imports.

Now it is also opening up its offshore oilfields to foreign development.

Foreign oil companies are actively engaged in offshore exploration in the Gulf of Mexico with six blocks awarded to Spain's Repsol and an adjacent four blocks are being drilled by Canada's Sherritt Mining from the Cuba's exclusive zone of 112,000 sq km.

The Brazilian state-owned oil company Petrobas recently signed a new agreement to drill in 10 blocks in the Gulf.

More...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/3266509.stm

Another reason why US CEO's are fighting to get the embargo lifted now whether Bush and the 2004 democratic p/residential contenders and their supporters like it or not.

Bu$hie doesn't want to attack Cuba, a la Grenada, if he has to turn tail in Iraq. They won't really have that much oil.

It sure as hell didn't stop them in Iraq.

From the article:

Nutec, a UK company based in Aberdeen, has signed a contract with the Cuban government to train 100 Cuban engineers in operational skills and safety in the management of offshore oil-rigs, in preparation for the day when light crude oil starts to flow for the first time in the Cuban zone of the Gulf of Mexico.

The first batch of ten Cubans have started the training course in Aberdeen.

The British Ambassador in Havana, Paul Hare, told the BBC that "this kind of UK-Cuba cooperation fits very well with our policy of constructive engagement," in contrast to Washington's policy of continuing to impose a 41-year old trade embargo.

Economic salvation

The high density domestic crude oil that now provides 90% of Cuba's electricity needs has forced power stations to introduce costly conversions to cope with its high sulphur content.

But the long term savings in foreign exchange and the reduction in power cuts are expected to provide a considerable boost to the economy. (snip/...)

(snip) The country has the technology to extract biomass from sugar-cane production and intends to utilise such new energy sources in the future. (snip/...)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A new line of commerce between Tampa and Cuba has opened:

Published Thursday, November 13, 2003

Shipment could open up regular Tampa-to-Cuba trade

By MITCH STACY
Associated Press Writer
TAMPA, Fla.

A trade consultant hopes a load of frozen chicken bound for Cuba on Friday will be the first of regular monthly food shipments from the Port of Tampa to the island nation.

The 1.5 million pounds of poultry transported by Caribe Services could mark the beginning of the first regular Tampa-to-Cuba cargo shipments since the United States installed a trade embargo more than four decades ago, said Daniel J. Fernandez, president of U.S.-Cuba Trade Consultants.

Cuba has bought more than $460 million in American goods in the two years since a law legalized the direct sales of farm products to the communist nation. Most of those shipments originated from other ports, including Jacksonville and Gulfport, Miss.

"This venture will represent the first time Tampa's federal waterways will be consistently used to transport commodities (to Cuba) in over 42 years," Fernandez said Thursday as a crane moved the boxed cargo onto the freighter H.F. Salhman.

"That is - in my estimation - huge," he said. "And it's a beginning."

http://www.theledger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20031113/APN/311131035

Wonder where they got it from. Bobby Kennedy Jr. went to Cuba to sell them on the idea in early February 1996 but it was nixed by the Helms-Burton Act. Kennedy posted his daily diary of his time in Cuba on his website observing pretty much the same thing everyone else on the planet has been saying but seven years later and most travel banned Americans are still none the wiser.

It's great to learn a Kennedy is involved now in creating a more wholesome relationship.

Gonna keep an eye out for more. Very good news.

Yes, there is oil in Cuba. When I visited Cuba early in 2001 and again in February this year, I saw pump jacks around the town of Moron. I'm not surprised that offshore areas look promising.

From what I've heard, Cuba's own oil is a bit "sour" (Has a sulphur content), but if it's homegrown, it's far less vulnerable to any blocking moves from Dubya and his right-wing friends, especially considering that oil-drilling technology has spread beyond the control of the US and the US' right wing.

Yet another reason that realists would admit that the US embargo of Cuba is an economic failure.

On the English speaking tour bus from Varadero to Havana just 90 miles south of Florida the whole busload broke out in cheers and applause at the sight of a Canadian flag flying atop a new oil rig.

Back then there were stories that the motherload might be right under Varadero and when the oil is worth more than the tourists you'll see oil wells sprouting around the hotels there.

It seems to me that the region could be the first thing on the agenda if the Lil'Dictator is re-appointed to a second term.

Venezuela experts help Cuba oil search and output
By Reuters
Sep 4, 2003, 14:12

Venezuelan energy experts are helping Cuba increase its oil output and carry out new exploration as part of growing bilateral cooperation, Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez said Thursday.

Perez, who held talks in Caracas with his Venezuelan counterpart Roy Chaderton, said "dozens" of oil technicians from the OPEC nation had traveled to Cuba to give on-the-spot advice and train Cuban personnel.

"Venezuelan technicians are teaching us; they are helping us to improve our own production, and also in the training of our people," Perez told reporters.

He added the technical support also covered Cuba's oil exploration efforts but offered no details.

This Venezuelan assistance for Cuba's oil industry was another sign of the increasing ties between the world's fifth largest oil exporter and the communist-ruled Caribbean island.

This has irked the United States, which maintains trade sanctions on Cuba and is a major importer of Venezuelan oil. (snip/...)

http://www.latinpetroleum.com/article_1901.shtml

We should have been there with an olive branch and
one of our famous lectures when the Berlin Wall came down.

Arrogance and stubborness and profits for just a few in
this country by keeping gates closed means profits for
people of Brazil, Canada, the UK, etc.

We are losers under this right wing AND ALL THE
DEMOCRATS WHO WENT ALONG WITH IT AND PUT MONEY
IN THEIR POCKETS.

An opinion from Corpus Christi, which is becoming a hopeful port city for agricultural shipments to Cuba:

Cynical GOP maneuver saves Cuba travel ban from the ax
In this parlay, desire To make political hay trumped principle.

November 15, 2003


At the last minute Republican leaders have killed a provision that would have largely ended a government ban on travel to Cuba by most Americans.

Lifting the travel ban, part of long-standing U.S. sanctions against the Castro regime, has growing congressional support. The Senate endorsed it 59 to 38 last month and the House by 227 to 188 in September.

The provision was attached to an overdue $88.9 billion bill funding the departments of Transportation and Trea-sury. President Bush had threatened to veto the bill if the restrictions were lifted.
Tourist travel to Cuba is illegal under current law, and the Bush administration has vowed to identify and fine Americans who go there illegally. Travel to Cuba is legal, with licenses, for some — journalists, scholars, humanitarian workers, agricultural exporters and people with family on the island.

Bush may have been bluffing on the veto threat — he has yet to veto a bill — but the lawmakers would not have risked delaying a bill that funded not only the two agencies but highway construction, voting reform and Amtrak, not to mention their own pay raise.