Quandry: Cuba finds 20 billion bbl of oil offshore

So we have established that both fossil fuels and capitalism are destroying the world and by all means offshore drilling in the USA must be stopped at all costs because developing energy resources is not the answer to our energy needs. Yet now Cuba finds a lot of oil offshore and certainly will exploit this resource to perpetuate a dictatorship.

I leave it to the CE brain trust to square this circle: Why is this ok for Cuba but not for the USA?

Cuba says may have 20 bn barrels of oil offshore
17 Oct 2008, 1110 hrs IST, REUTERS


HAVANA: Cuban oil officials said on Thursday that Cuba may have more than 20 billion barrels of recoverable oil in its offshore fields, more than twice the maximum estimate of the US geological survey.

Such a large oil find would likely make Cuba an oil exporter and bring prosperity to the communist-run island that now imports half its energy needs. Officials said they hoped to drill the first production wells next year.

The estimate, unveiled at a Cubapetroleo, or Cupet, news briefing, is sharply higher than the maximum of 9 billion barrels the US geological survey has said may lie beneath Cuban waters.

Cupet exploration manager Rafael Tenreyro Perez said Cuba's estimate was higher because the Cubans had better information about their offshore geology.

"We have more data. I'm almost certain that if they (US Geological Survey) ask for all the data we have, (their estimate) is going to grow considerably."

The US agency has also said Cuba could have as much as 21 trillion cubic feet of gas, but Tenreyro said Cupet did not have an estimate for offshore gas reserves because they were too difficult to figure out.

Cuba's oil estimates are based mostly on comparisons to how much oil is being produced from similar geological structures off the coasts of Mexico and the United States, Tenreyro said.

Cuba has undersea geology "very similar" to that in Mexico's giant Cantarell oil field in the Bay of Campeche, he said.

Tenreyro said he expected the first production well to be drilled in mid-2009 and that several more wells could be started before next year is through.

A consortium of companies led by Spanish firm Repsol did earlier test wells and is expected to drill the first production well, which had been postponed from this year because of the difficulty of getting a drilling rig, Tenreyro said.

PRODUCTION-SHARING
High oil prices have prompted more drilling activity worldwide and made rigs very expensive and hard to find, he said.

Even if drilling begins next year as planned, Tenreyro said it would be two to three years before oil actually began to flow into the market.

Cuba has signed production-sharing contracts with oil companies from around the world to drill its offshore fields. There are no US companies involved because of the US trade embargo imposed on Cuba since 1962 that prevents them from doing business with the island.

Brazil's Petrobras, which has years of deepwater-drilling experience, has been negotiating with Cuba for rights to exploit one of its offshore blocks, but Tenreyro said a deal had not been struck.

"We hope to have good news soon," he said.

Tenreyro said Cuba was currently producing about 60,000 barrels of oil and 20,000 barrels equivalent of natural gas daily from onshore wells scattered mostly along its northern coast.

He said that production covered almost 50 percent of Cuba's daily energy needs. The island imports about 90,000 barrels a day from oil-rich socialist ally Venezuela in exchange for the services of thousands of Cuban doctors.

Cuba is stepping up the pace of onshore drilling and is conducting a pilot project to increase secondary recovery from the aging Varadero field that has been Cuba's primary field since the 1970s, he said. Secondary recovery involves pumping gas into old wells to force out what is left of the oil.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Intl_Business/Cuba_says_may_have_20_bn_barrels_of_oil_offshore/articleshow/3607222.cms

I welcome my Cuban neighbors to the table.

Are you now looking for oil welfare check from the Cubans?

In Cuban waters the folks all up in arms about offshore drilling will be unable to stop it, and it will be closer to Florida Beaches than anything American Oil firms have ever drilled.

Another reason to lift the outdated embargo on trade with Cuba!

Maybe just a partial lifting, for all combustable goods . . . oil, cigars, hot Cuban woman. . .

I agree.

Wait... a Stockula thread with only one snarky response thus far? Amazing. It can be done!

/non-snarky comment.

Well, I think it would be appreciated if the following were at all qualified:

So... Who's making this argument, stock? Didn't you just post the article? In a very general sense of the question, it's not for the USA to say whether or not it's okay. That whole "sovereign nation" thing that I know your ilk has such a hard time fitting their brain-spots onto.

I personally think we should lift the embargo, buy the shit out of Cuban oil, and "defeat" Castro's regime with culture. Y'know, the thing we were doing with Iran before we fucked it all up...

...for oil.

Pretty simple stock.

First, that article says Cuba may have found 20B barrels of oil, it's an estimate. But let's take their word for it and say they have.

To answer the first question, why don't we drill offshore? As you stated (sarcastically, but accurately) there's absolutely no need for it, the benefit we would get from offshore drilling amounts to a rounding error. Obama made the claim that keeping your tires properly inflated and your car maintenanced regularly would save as much gas as we would get from offshore drilling. And he was right.

So why would we rape our shores for oil for a 1% increase in production 20 years from now? Is this what's supposed to help us curtail our dependence on foreign oil? Really?

To answer the second question, why can Cuba do it then? Aren't we allowing the further funding of a dictatorship drilling right off our shores?

First, Cuba isn't an evil dictatorship, it's a country of 11 million people that isn't allowed to trade with the world's wealthiest nation, a mere 90 miles away. This puts them at a severe disadvantage that no other country on Earth has to face. They do what they need to do to sustain itself.

But even then, Cuba's oil consumption is 204,000 barrels a day. Our oil consumption is 100 times that. So whereas 20B barrels would last us a mere three years, it would last Cuba 274 years.

Offshore drilling would be a useless stop gap for us, but a boon to a country that needs all the help they can get.

No one made this statement.

You are a ridiculous human being.

invade cuba?


or is it possible we can build an off shore tanker and drink their milk shake up?

I tried to find the image of the Burns Slant Drilling Company, but google failed me.

What do you call Dick Cheney and George Bush's energy policy? No transparency in a democracy isn't democracy at all, its a dictatorship. Also, Cuba is not the U.S., they are under a strict trade embargo and aren't likely to have the technical capability for alternative fuel and energy development, we do. They're doing what they can, we'll do what we can. The U.S. =/= Cuba. Alternative energy production is the solution but in the mean time, there are plenty of areas already open to oil exploration and drilling. I don't see much of a quandary here.

Does it get lonely in perplexion-ville?

ha thats the first thing i could think of aswell

Eeeexcellent!
Muahahahaha!

Oh, while we're off-topic: it's "quandary"

Could've just been a typo, but I know from experience how much stock loves learning from his fellow SG users.

You forgot baseball players.

i'm unclear about who exactly said it's okay for Cuba. as far as i can tell from the information presented, the US is not involved in Cuba's potential offshore drilling--as a matter of fact, we've forbidden ourselves from buying their oil. i'm not aware of anyone who's protesting US offshore drilling but supporting Cuban offshore drilling, which is what you seem to be accusing people of.

I third this motion!

And yet despite finding 20 billion barrels of oil, Cuba is still involved in alternative energy research and legislation.

Huh, fancy that.

That would be because fossil fuels and capitalism are destroying the world. It must be true, Stockula says so.

Good for Cuba.

I think if we started burning all of the strawmen that Stockula keeps creating, we'd be free from our dependence on foreign oil.

With this new fallacy-based energy system, we shall know no limits! We shall reach Mars on Stockula's strawmen, and the stars on his false dilemmas!

We already get them.