In 1960, Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel Castro nationalized refineries belonging to Exxon, Shell Oil, and Texaco (now Chevron). American oil companies have not been back since.
On September 4, 1961, the U.S. Congress passed the Foreign Assistance Act prohibiting aid to Cuba and authorizing President Kennedy to create a “total embargo upon all trade” with Cuba. The embargo, further expanded by other US presidents, remains in place today, despite the almost 50-year survival of the Fidel Castro regime in the face of such restrictions.
The US trade embargo with Cuba has had limited impact on the US economy with Cuba’s export products — such as cigars, rum, citrus, vegetables, nickel, seafood, and sugar — being available elsewhere. (OK, maybe not so much with the cigars.) But what if oil was to be found in abundance in Cuba? It would have oil-hungry US oil majors crying foul if a Canadian, European, or South American oil company strikes it rich with a major oil find in Cuban territorial waters while they are banned from taking their chances in finding a new Spindletop less than 100 miles from the US.
The U.S. Geological Survey reports that Cuba holds estimated reserves of 4.6 billion barrels of oil, and 9.8 trillion cubic feet of natural gas in its Gulf of Mexico waters.
In 2001, Brazil’s PETROBRAS spent about $17 million drilling in Cuban waters but made no commercial discoveries. Three years later, Spain’s Repsol YPF set up a joint venture with Cubapetróleo, the government-owned oil company, to search for oil in the Gulf of Mexico off the northwestern coast of Cuba.
Companies from Spain, Canada, India, and Malaysia have current exploration contracts with Cuba. The most successful foreign oil producer to date is Canada’s Sherritt International, which has been working in Cuba since 1992 and drilling for oil since 2002. It was producing more than 18,000 barrels a day in 2007 from its fields at Yumuri, Varadero, Canasi, and Puerto Escondido in northwest Cuba.
Cuba boasts no big hydrocarbon discoveries yet, but in January 2008 PETROBRAS signed a wide ranging exploration, production, and refining treaty, renewing its commitment to explore for oil in the Cuban Gulf of Mexico.
Some day, maybe soon, an oil executive is going to report a major oil strike perhaps as close as 50 miles off of Southern Florida, and light up a Cuban cigar.
Most likely that executive will not be an American.
Cuba would be willing to allow US oil companies to explore and drill, just as they allow others to do that. The problem is US law which prevents US companies from entering the Cuban market.
Not long ago the New York Philharmonic went to North Korea to perform. Cuba is the only place on earth where people from the United States need a permission slip from the federal government to go for a visit. What are they so afraid that we’ll see? How bad life supposedly is there? Of course Cuba has any number of problems, but somehow the society manages to work despite many obstacles.
Considering everything, from geography to population magnitude and more, Cuba and the United States are not and cannot be equal. Cuba’s government certainly does limit democratic rights. But in a situation like David and Goliath, Cuba does what it feels it must to defend itself. Look at Iraq today and you can see what Cuba would look like if it were “liberated” by Washington.
In Guantanamo, the world can see what legal system Washington would impose on the rest of Cuba if only it could. In Guantanamo, which is United States occupied territory, prisoners are held without trial for years, and are told they could be held indefinitely even if not found guilty there. In this context, Cuba’s defensive measures should surprise no one.
My father and his parents lived in Cuba from 1939 to 1942. They were German Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany, and not political left-wingers. That family history is where my own interest in Cuba comes from.
Cuban society today represents an effort to build an alternative to the way life was under the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista, who ran Cuba before Fidel Castro led a revolution there. No one complained about a lack of human rights and democracy in those days, but U.S. businesses were protected.
Some things work, some don’t. Like any society, Cuba its flaws and contradictions, as well as having solid achievements. No society is perfect. But we can certainly learn a few things from Cuba’s experience.
We should all be free to visit Cuba. We can visit China and Vietnam, even North Korea, Syria and Iran, why can’t we visit Cuba and see it for ourselves? Cuba is our neighbor and we should simply normalized relations with the island.
The CubaNews Yahoo news group which I’ve operated for eight years has over 80,000 items available in a free, easy-to-use database. Check it out.
And thanks for your column.