http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/06/12/2285003/cubas-oil-our-potential-mess.html#storylink=misearch
Originally published July 3, 2011 at 5:58 PM | Page modified July 3, 2011 at 10:27 PM
Cuba’s oil hunt, our potential mess
In about five months, Spanish oil giant Repsol is to begin a risky offshore exploration in Cuba’s North Basin, about 60 to 70 miles from Key West and even closer to ecologically fragile waters of the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary.
By Cammy Clark
The Miami Herald
KEY WEST, Fla. –
In about five months, Spanish oil giant Repsol is to begin a risky offshore exploration in Cuba’s North Basin, about 60 to 70 miles from Key West and even closer to ecologically fragile waters of the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary.
From a $750 million semi-submersible rig, Repsol will drill through 5,600 feet of seawater with strong currents and an additional 14,000 or so feet of layered rock at high pressure.
It’s the start of Cuba’s big push to find and produce what geologists believe is an energy treasure trove of oil and natural-gas reservoirs. The prospects are so promising that seven international consortiums involving 10 countries have partnered with the communist nation.
In the Florida Keys and up the East Coast, the prospect of potential oil spills so close to precious coral reefs, fisheries and coastal communities is frightening. Federal, state and local agencies have been scrambling to update contingency response plans using the lessons learned from last year’s devastating BP Deepwater Horizon blowout, which took 85 days to contain.
“Deepwater Horizon was 450 miles away, and we saw the impact for the Keys,” said Coast Guard Capt. Pat DeQuattro, commander of Sector Key West. “This is much, much closer, and Cuba is a sovereign nation.”
Cuba also has been embargoed for nearly 50 years, with bitter relations dating to the Kennedy administration.
As it stands, a lot of U.S. containment equipment, technology, chemical dispersants and personnel expertise would not be allowed to respond to a spill where it likely would be needed most – “at the faucet,” said oil-industry expert Jorge Piñon, a visiting research fellow at the Cuban Research Institute at Florida International University.
Politics also would prevent relief wells in Cuban waters from being built by U.S. companies or with U.S. resources.
“The clock is ticking for the U.S. to rethink its policy,” said Dan Whittle, Cuban program director for the nonprofit Environmental Defense Fund. “Hoping [Cuban oil exploration] goes away is not good policy.”
Even the final report issued in January from the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling recommended U.S. cooperation with Cuba’s oil industry to protect “fisheries, coastal tourism and other valuable U.S. natural resources.”
The report said it is in the national interest to negotiate with Cuba on common, rigorous safety standards and regulatory oversight. The countries also should develop a protocol to cooperate on containment and response strategies and preparedness in case of a spill.
But direct discussions have not happened, due primarily to a powerful voting bloc of pro-embargo Cuban Americans. Among them is Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Republican who represents the Florida Keys and Miami-Dade County and is chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
“You can’t trust that evil, awful Castro regime,” she said. “It would be dangerously naive.”
Ros-Lehtinen has spearheaded efforts to stop oil drilling in Cuban waters.
In May, she introduced the Caribbean Coral Reef Protection Act, the third version of legislation she tried to push through previous Congresses. The bill would impose penalties against companies that spend $1 million or more developing Cuba’s offshore petroleum resources and would deny U.S. visas to their foreign principals.
“I know it will be hard to pass; I have no delusions of success,” Ros-Lehtinen said. “But it’s important to take a stand. … We cannot allow the Castro regime to become the oil tycoons of the Caribbean.”
Rep. Vern Buchanan, R-Fla., also is pushing legislation that would deny U.S. oil and gas permits to companies that do business with Cuba. But of 10 companies that have agreements with Cuba to drill offshore, only private company Repsol also has leases in the United States.
Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., has been fighting to stop Cuban oil exploration for years.
Yet, the best the United States has been able to do is push for safety. In May, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar met with Repsol officials in Madrid and reportedly used leases in U.S. waters as leverage to obtain assurances the company would follow the same American safety standards in Cuba. Repsol also has been in contact with the Coast Guard regarding how it would deal with a potential spill.
There is ample reason to believe drilling in Cuban waters will be highly profitable. The U.S. Geological Survey in 2004 estimated Cuba’s North Basin has 5.5 billion barrels of oil and 9.8 trillion cubic feet of natural gas – roughly the same amount as reserves in Ecuador and Colombia.
Cuban geologists also estimate an additional 10 billion to 15 billion barrels of undiscovered oil lies in deeper territorial waters in the middle of the Gulf. The amount of recoverable oil and gas, however, always is much less than what’s available.
On June 5, Cuban President Raul Castro watched as Cuba’s national oil company, Cupet, signed an expanded oil agreement in Havana with China’s state-owned oil company. Cupet also has agreements with state-owned companies from Norway, Russia, India, Vietnam, Malaysia, Canada, Angola and Venezuela.
Coast Guard Rear Adm. William Baumgartner, commander for the Southeast United States, said much effort has gone into planning for a possible spill. But, he added, “The diplomatic situation will make our job more difficult in planning and execution.”
Some companies already have special licenses issued by the Treasury Department and Commerce Department to send staffing and other resources to Cuba in the event of an oil spill.
If those companies did respond to a spill, Baumgartner said the Coast Guard would be “well aware of what they are doing inside Cuban waters and complement what they are doing.”
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is updating 2004 computer tracking models of a spill coming from Cuban waters.
“Even with what the models tell you, you still want to be prepared for any possibility,” said Sean Morton, superintendent of the FSpec
“We’ve had markers and mooring buoys break lose in Keys waters, and they have ended up as far north as Scotland and also in Alabama,” Morton said.
Special thanks to Richard Charter
