http://thehill.com/blogs/e2-wire/677-e2-wire/163755-house-foreign-affairs-chair-floats-bill-to-deter-cuban-offshore-drilling
Good on you Ileana–we don’t want drilling near Key West and Florida’s coral reefs. Let’s hope we open dialog to try to minimize any dangerous practices and increase safety measures if they do drill. –DV
By Andrew Restuccia – 05/27/11 03:43 PM ET
House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.) floated legislation Friday aimed at deterring oil-and-gas development off the coast of Cuba.
The legislation, which Ros-Lehtinen introduced in the last Congress, comes as public officials are growing increasingly wary of Cuba’s intentions to drill off of its coast, which is less than 100 miles away from the United States.
Spanish oil company Repsol is planning to drill off Cuba’s coast, and others are hoping to follow suit. Repsol is set to bring an oil rig to Cuban waters later this year, according to Reuters.
Ros-Lehtinen’s legislation, which is co-sponsored by two Democrats and five Republicans, makes it illegal for any U.S. citizen to assist the Cuban government in bolstering its offshore drilling industry. It would also deny U.S. visas to anybody who invests more than $1 million in Cuban offshore drilling.
“Desperate for new channels of funding, the Cuban tyranny will say and do anything to persuade others to invest in its oil sector in order to stay afloat,” Ros-Lehtinen said in a statement Friday. “It is in our national security interests to deter others from participating in these reckless schemes.”
The Obama administration says it is monitoring closely Cuba’s attempts to expand its domestic oil production.
“For us it is an issue of concern. We’re watching it closely,” Salazar said last month. “It’s an issue that we’re monitoring carefully.”
A State Department spokesman told The Hill last month that the administration “will pursue activities within our legal authority in order to minimize risk to U.S. territory.”
But the spokesman said administration officials have “not held discussions with the Cuban government on Cuba’s oil exploration.” In fact, the United States has not had diplomatic relations with Cuba for about 50 years.
While the administration has not been in communication with the Cuban government, Interior Department officials have met with Repsol to discuss their plans to drill in the Gulf, Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (BOEMRE) Director Michael Bromwich has said.
“[W]e expect any company operating in Cuba’s oil and gas sector to adhere to industry environmental, health, and safety standards and have adequate prevention, mitigation, and remediation systems in place in the event of an incident,” the State Department spokesman said.
The United States is working closely with Mexico to ensure that there is a common set of safety and environmental offshore drilling standards. But the Cuban government did not participate in an April forum in Washington in which officials from a dozen countries and the European Union discussed drilling safety.
National oil-spill commission co-chairman William Reilly has called on the Obama administration to negotiate an agreement with Cuba that would lay out uniform safety standards for offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.
But Reilly said earlier this month that the administration isn’t pleased with his comments.
“That’s something that’s very important to us, I think, given that they’re drilling 50 miles off Key West, so I’ve asked to be invited to Cuba to talk about the report and have had my wrist slapped by the administration for raising the sensitive Cuban issue,” Reilly said, according to E&E News. “I had to say, ‘I don’t work for you.’ ”
Special thanks to Richard Charter