AP
Saturday, July 29, 2006
... In July 2004, however, the Spanish oil company Repsol-YPF, in partnership with Cuba's state oil company, CUPET, identified five fields it classified as "high-quality" in the deep water of the Florida Straits, 20 miles (32 kilometres) northeast of Havana.
Seven months later, a report by the US Geological Survey confirmed it: The North Cuba Basin held a substantial quantity of oil - 4.6 billion to 9.3 billion barrels of crude and 9.8 trillion to 21.8 trillion cubic feet (278 billion cubic metres to 617 billion cubic metres) of natural gas.
Cuba wasted no time, dividing the 74,000-square-mile (120,000-square-kilometre) area into 59 exploration blocks, and then welcoming the foreign oil conglomerates with offers of production-sharing agreements ...
Then, in May, Spain's Repsol-YPF announced it was partnering with India's Oil and Natural Gas Corporation, and Norsk Hydro ASA of Norway to explore for oil and gas in six of the 59 deep-water blocks along Cuba's maritime border with the United States. (Sherritt International Corporation, the Canadian oil company, has acquired exploration rights in four of the deep-sea blocks.) ...
http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/news/html/20060728T200000-0500_110018_OBS_WILL_CUBA_S_OFFSHORE_OIL_DISCOVERY_FINALLY_BREAK_THE_US_TRADE_EMBARGO_.asp