Cuba to drill five new oil wells by 2013

HAVANA — Cuba on Tuesday announced plans to drill five deepwater oil wells in the Gulf of Mexico beginning this summer, expressing confidence that its efforts will be rewarded with major new energy finds.

"We're about to move to the drilling phase," said Manuel Marrero, an official with the government authority tasked with overseeing Cuba's oil sector.

"We're all really hopeful that we will be able to discover large reserves of oil and gas," said Marrero, who added that the ventures would be undertaken with the help of unspecified foreign companies.

He said the deepwater wells were to be drilled between 2011 and 2013, and would be in waters ranging in depth between 400 meters (a quarter mile) and 1,500 meters (1.6 miles). He did not specify which countries would be among the foreign partners working with Havana on the project.

Some studies estimate Cuba has probable reserves of between five and nine billion barrels of oil in its economic zone in the Gulf of Mexico. Cuban authorities have said their crude reserves are as high as 20 billion barrels.

In 2010, Cuba produced 21 million barrels of oil, about the same as it had extracted the previous year, representing a little less than half of its annual energy needs.

Cuba depends on Venezuela for the rest of its oil imports of about 100,000 barrels per day. Any cut to Venezuelan supplies could spell political and economic disaster for Havana.

The only one-party communist regime in the Americas, Cuba has long been plagued by energy dependence that amounts to its economic Achilles' heel.

Havana used to depend on the eastern bloc for cut-rate oil, and plunged into economic chaos and blackouts when it was cut off after 1989.

Locking in energy independence, aside from potentially turning Cuba from a cash-strapped developing nation into a flush oil exporter, could help project its current regime years into the future.

On Monday, Rafael Tenrreyro, the head of state oil form Cupet's exploration branch, said Cuba was anxiously awaiting a platform made in China for one of its offshore efforts.

"At some point this summer it should be getting here," Tenrreyro told reporters, referring to the next few months' time.

Despite the BP oil spill tragedy in the gulf, Tenrreyro insisted "safety is more than guaranteed. Cuban institutions have made sure that is the case."

Cuba's economic zone in the Gulf, just a stone's throw from the US state of Florida, is divided into 59 blocs. Of those 20 are ventures with Repsol (Spain), Hydro (Norway), OVL (India), PDVSA (Venezuela), Petrovietnam and Petronas (Malaysia). Petrobras (Brazil) recently pulled out and Sonangol (Angola) recently signed on.

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