Friends and foes have called Cuba many things — a progressive beacon, a quixotic underdog, an oppressive tyranny — but no one has called it lucky, until now.
Mother nature, it emerged this week, appears to have blessed the island with enough oil reserves to vault it into the ranks of energy powers. The government announced there may be more than 20-billion barrels of recoverable oil in offshore fields in Cuba’s share of the Gulf of Mexico, more than twice the previous estimate.
If confirmed, it puts Cuba’s reserves on par with those of the United States and into the world’s top 20. Drilling is expected to start next year by Cuba’s state oil company Cubapetroleo, or Cupet.
“It would change their whole equation. The government would have more money and no longer be dependent on foreign oil,” said Kirby Jones, founder of the Washington-based US-Cuba Trade Association. “It could join the club of oil exporting nations.”
Havana based its higher estimate on comparisons with oil output from similar geological structures off the coasts of Mexico and the US. Cuba’s undersea geology was “very similar” to Mexico’s giant Cantarell oil field in the Bay of Campeche, said Cupet’s exploration manager, Rafael Tenreyro Perez.
Cuba produces about 60 000 barrels of oil daily, covering almost half of its needs, and imports the rest from Venezuela in return for Cuban doctors and sports instructors. Even that barter system puts a strain on an impoverished economy in which Cubans earn an average monthly salary of $20.
However, there is little prospect of Cuba becoming a communist version of Kuwait. Its oil is more than a mile deep under the ocean and difficult and expensive to extract. The four-decade-old US economic embargo prevents several of Cuba’s potential oil partners — notably Brazil, Norway and Spain — from using valuable first-generation technology.
“You’re looking at three to five years minimum before any meaningful returns,” said Jonathan Benjamin-Alvarado, a Cuba energy specialist at the University of Nebraska —