Cuba, it turns out, has offshore oil and gas reserves ripe for exploration. Too bad the brutal US embargo on Cuba prevents US oil and gas exploration companies from getting in on the action.

But wait! Two Republican senators have introduced bills that would waive the Cuban embargo - just for oil and gas companies - to allow them to enter into joint ventures with Cuba to drill in its waters.

Apparently they will bend the rules to allow for a rip off of Cuba's petroleum, but not to sell food or medical supplies.

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The oil deposits in the Mexican Gulf are distributed among three different countries: Mexico, the US and ... yes ... Cuba. Part of the oil deposits of that piece of ocean are under Cuban waters. In fact Cuba's oil reserves have the capacity to produce 1 million barrels a day. Source

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can't they just refuse to accepts bids from US companies?

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Let the Americans drill for oil and Cuba can take royalties... Or leave the oil sitting there. I beleive they'll opt for the former if thats the only choices given to them.

I'm really curious what Cuba's reaction would be... You would think they would opt for taking oil companies from Russia or Venezula first... Even Canada... Before American ones.

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oil reserves are in a big pool

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Not for sure, but it's definately possible. From the links it looks like it has mostly been testing and gathering data as opposed to actual discovery as of yet. I'd have to see some more geological data to actually confirm that.

Hehe, apparently China is the big partener... I find that pretty funny given the history of the oil sands (Americans have done much to keep the Chinese out of the oilsands... Pretty much enforcing the 'its our oil on canadian land' viewpoint). Now China and Cuba are search for oil miles off the US coastline.

Greetings from the lord humungus! My dogs have discovered your puny plan. Hand over that fat tank of gas, and you'll all be allowed to go free!!!

Society and common decency will survive attacks by corporate barbarian hordes. Socialism will outlast widget capitalism based on oil consumption.

Viva la revolucion!

[ 18 July 2006: Message edited by: Fidel ]

[ 18 July 2006: Message edited by: Heavy Sharper ]

Does it mean everyone born in Canada (never mind the immigrants!) is born with the automatic right to burn fossil fuels, cut down the forests, and extract fish from the oceans and minerals from the earth, without regard for the Earth's ecology or for the material needs of the vast majority of the world's population?

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Originally posted by BleedingHeart:
I wonder if they have weapons of mass destruction?

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The U.S.A. has been the largest source of terrorism throughout Latin America.

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After that “success,” the U.S. moved on to introduce African swine fever to Cuba in 1971. This was the first outbreak of swine fever in the Western Hemisphere. As a result of the epidemic, Cuba was forced to slaughter the entire pig population (some 500,000 animals), eliminating the supply of pork, a staple of the Cuban diet. When Cuban government spokesmen first accused Washington of unleashing the biological attack, U.S. officials dismissed this with a wave of the hand. However, six years later, following the post-Watergate Congressional investigations of skullduggery by U.S. intelligence agencies, a New York paper reported that a “U.S. intelligence source” told the paper that “he was given the virus in a sealed, unmarked container at a U.S. Army base and CIA training ground in Panama with instructions to turn it over to the anti-Castro group” (“CIA Link to Cuban Pig Virus Reported,” Newsday, 10 January 1977). The article explained in detail how the virus was transferred from Fort Gulick to Cuba.

A decade later, the U.S. introduced a virulent strain of dengue fever in Cuba, as a result of which 273,000 people on the island came down with the illness and 158 died, including 101 children. An article in Covert Action (Summer 1982) detailed U.S. experiments with dengue fever at the Army’s Fort Detrick chemical/biological warfare center and its research into the Aedes aegypti mosquito which delivers it. The article noted that only Cuba of all the Caribbean countries was affected, and concluded that “the dengue epidemic could have been a covert U.S. operation.” Two years later, a leader of the Omega 7 gusano (Cuban counterrevolutionary) terrorist group, Eduardo Victor Arocena Pérez, admitted (in a Manhattan trial in which he was convicted of murdering an attaché of the Cuban Mission to the UN) that one of their groups had a mission to “carry some germs to introduce them in Cuba to be used against the Soviets and against the Cuban economy, to begin what was called chemical war” just before simultaneous outbreaks of hemorrhagic dengue fever, hemorrhagic conjunctivitis, tobacco mold, sugar cane fungus and a new outbreak of African swine fever (Covert Action, Fall 1984).

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Originally posted by Fidel:

Society and common decency will survive attacks by corporate barbarian hordes. Socialism will outlast widget capitalism based on oil consumption.

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[ 19 July 2006: Message edited by: Frustrated Mess ]

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Originally posted by Frustrated Mess:
...I don't know, Sweden, aiming for an oil free economy in 20 years? Which is the better example?

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Sweden, of course. But Sweden's almost always been ahead of the pack environmentally and conservation-wise...and that's under all stripes of government.

In social democratic Europe, one of the easiest ways to create and maintain a large number of well-paying union jobs is to harvest natural resources. European social democrats have, historically, been more than happy to log, mine and pave...In Canada, provincial NDP governments have been somewhat better than governments of other stripes re: the environment, IMO, but not by much...Saskatchewan's looking to get into the oil business, f'rinstance, and not only is our environmental legislation not that great, but somehow I doubt that we'll be big on conservation, so long as the royalty checks are coming in.

Venezuela's sucking up its oil like nobody's business. The Soviet Union had appalling resource management - or lack thereof, rather. China's coal and oil consumption is rapidly increasing and their environmental practices, such as they are, are certainly no better than the West's.

Which model do you think Cuba's more likely to follow?

But, look...the U.S. and Canada are in no position to criticize anyone, really, in terms of resource consumption and environmental practices. But the knee-jerk idea that Communists, socialists, social democrats, or whatever, will conserve natural resources better than "widget capitalists" is, I think, naive...and, well, wrong.

EDIT: And for that matter, I'm glad Cuba may have oil. More power to 'em. And I hope that, if they develop whatever oil may be there, they do so responsibly, with an eye to sustainability and conservation. But I'm not convinced that will be the case.

[ 19 July 2006: Message edited by: Erstwhile ]

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Originally posted by Erstwhile:

Yeah, because leftist governments have a much better record on conservation of natural resources than rightist ones.

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Originally posted by Fidel:

Acshully, what do you think David Suzuki had to say about ecosocialism in Cuba after his visit there last year ?.

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What, that Cuba had to go organic due to a lack of cheap oil (thanks to the fall of the USSR) and the inability to afford pesticides etc.?

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Originally posted by Erstwhile:

What, that Cuba had to go organic due to a lack of cheap oil (thanks to the fall of the USSR) and the inability to afford pesticides etc.?

What makes you think that once they find they have cheap oil again, and a source of national revenue, that they won't return to the industrial farming model to boost production?

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