Word: cuba
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Still, the concessions so far represent less than a quarter of the 59 drilling blocks that Cuba hopes to exploit in the 43,000-sq.-mi. (112,000 sq km) EEZ. Analysts say one reason is the daunting infrastructural difficulties facing any company that drills in Cuba: firms have to bring much more of their own capital, equipment, technology and on-the-ground know-how than usual. This year's severe hurricane damage in Cuba has made the situation worse. Canada's Sherritt, in fact, recently dropped out of its four-block contract. "Who else is going to be willing...
...StatoilHidro and India's Oil & Natural Gas Corp., are part of the Repsol-led consortium. Venezuela's state-run Petroleos de Venezuela is considered a lesser player because it has little deep-water drilling experience. (China is also interested but so far only involved in onshore drilling in Cuba.) Cuba is now in important negotiations with Brazil's Petrobras, which just made its own multibillion-barrel oil find off its coast near Rio de Janeiro and could, analysts say, be the major offshore drilling partner for Cuba if it jumps...
...Cuban calculation really on the level? Skeptics ask if the 20-billion-bbl. estimate is just a ploy to rekindle investor interest, at a time when falling oil prices could make the maritime find less attractive to the potential international partners Cuba needs to extract the oil. The effort is all the more urgent, they add, because reduced oil revenues could also make friends like left-wing Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez less able to aid Cuba with cut-rate crude shipments and capital to improve the island's aged refineries. "The Cuba numbers from my point of view...
...Geological Survey (USGS), a government agency, made the initial estimate of 5 billion bbl.to 10 billion bbl. for Cuba's northwest offshore sector (known as the Exclusive Economic Zone, or EEZ) in 2004. Tenreyro says Cupet's analysis is based on what he calls a more accurate comparison of similar maritime oil fields like those off Mexico's Gulf Coast. "We're talking about that magnitude," he argued last week. "We have more data" than the USGS. But Cupet, an arm of Cuba's ultra-secret communist government, hasn't offered much more evidence than that. Chris Schenk...
...Cuba now produces about 60,000 barrels of oil per day (BPD) and consumes more than 150,000 BPD. (It also produces natural gas.) Venezuela makes up the difference by shipping almost 100,000 BPD to Cuba. The University of Miami's Pinon says the more serious issue is refining capacity: even if Cuba has only the low estimate of 5 billion bbl. - which could yield more than 300,000 BPD - it needs Venezuela's investment to upgrade refineries like the Soviet-built plant at Cienfuegos. But plummeting crude prices mean that Chávez may have a lot less...