On the heels of US President George W. Bush's call to shift away from reliance in the US on Middle East oil, a contingent of Texas oilmen and elite bureaucrats from Havana gathered at the Sheraton Hotel on Friday to discuss a nervy alternative: Cuba.
In a challenge to Washington's 45-year trade embargo against Fidel Castro's government, Cuban officials are courting US energy companies to produce oil in its territorial waters.
Late Friday, an agency of the US Treasury Department, the Office of Foreign Assets Control, asked Starwood Hotels, the American company that owns the Sheraton Hotel where the three-day meeting was being held, to require the Cuban delegation to leave, the event organizers said.
"It's outrageous that I, as an American citizen, can't go and talk to someone on Mexican soil," said Kirby Jones, a former World Bank official and the organizer of the meeting for the Washington-based US-Cuba Trade Association. Jones said the US executives would try to meet with Cubans yesterday morning at another venue.
Government officials said the US had asked the hotel to remove the delegation because the law prohibited US companies from supplying services to Cuban individuals or companies.
Norberto de Sousa, the manager of the Sheraton Maria Isabel Hotel, declined to comment on Friday night. Representatives from Starwood could not be reached for comment.
Some of the largest US oil companies, including ExxonMobil and Valero Energy, were meeting with Cuban officials on what was thought to be neutral ground in the cradle of Mexican capitalism, a short stroll on Paseo de la Reforma from a Starbucks, the US embassy and Mexico's stock exchange. The oil-importing Port of Corpus Christi and US shipping and oilfield equipment companies also sent representatives.
Although Cuba has suffered from energy shortages since the former Soviet Union halted subsidized oil shipments, its potential as an oil producer has caught the attention of geologists and wildcatters. According to the US Energy Information Administration, Cuba's proven oil reserves of 750 million barrels exceed those of Sudan, an African nation that has lured large non-American investments to its oil industry despite US economic sanctions in place since 1997.
"We have absolutely no limitations on working with American oil companies. The barriers, unfortunately, come from the other side," Alberto Wong Calvo, director of hydrocarbons at Cuba's National Office of Mineral Resources, said.
Oil production in Cuba has surged since the country opened the industry to foreign investment in the 1990s, with operations by two Canadian companies, Sherritt International and Pebercan, helping to increase output to about 70,000 barrels a day in 2005 from a nadir of 18,000 barrels a day in 1992. Cuba consumes more than 150,000 barrels a day, with Venezuela providing a lifeline with imported oil on favorable financial terms.
Of course, the US economic embargo on dealings with Cuba currently prohibits energy companies from reaching exploration deals with Union Cubapetroleo, Cuba's national oil company. But executives who attended the conference said they were encouraged by the recent relaxation on restrictions of US food exports to Cuba and the competitive implications of Chinese rigs searching for oil this year in Cuban waters off the Florida straits.
"It's a difficult road ahead, but we're in the same neighborhood," said Amado Duron, director of operations at Valero Energy, the San Antonio-based refining company that could profit from processing Cuban oil at its refineries in Texas, Louisiana or the Caribbean island of Aruba. ?
‘TERRORIST ATTACK’: The convoy of Brigadier General Hamdi Shukri resulted in the ‘martyrdom of five of our armed forces,’ the Presidential Leadership Council said A blast targeting the convoy of a Saudi Arabian-backed armed group killed five in Yemen’s southern city of Aden and injured the commander of the government-allied unit, officials said on Wednesday. “The treacherous terrorist attack targeting the convoy of Brigadier General Hamdi Shukri, commander of the Second Giants Brigade, resulted in the martyrdom of five of our armed forces heroes and the injury of three others,” Yemen’s Saudi Arabia-backed Presidential Leadership Council said in a statement published by Yemeni news agency Saba. A security source told reporters that a car bomb on the side of the road in the Ja’awla area in
PRECARIOUS RELATIONS: Commentators in Saudi Arabia accuse the UAE of growing too bold, backing forces at odds with Saudi interests in various conflicts A Saudi Arabian media campaign targeting the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has deepened the Gulf’s worst row in years, stoking fears of a damaging fall-out in the financial heart of the Middle East. Fiery accusations of rights abuses and betrayal have circulated for weeks in state-run and social media after a brief conflict in Yemen, where Saudi airstrikes quelled an offensive by UAE-backed separatists. The United Arab Emirates is “investing in chaos and supporting secessionists” from Libya to Yemen and the Horn of Africa, Saudi Arabia’s al-Ekhbariya TV charged in a report this week. Such invective has been unheard of
‘SHOCK TACTIC’: The dismissal of Yang mirrors past cases such as Jang Song-thaek, Kim’s uncle, who was executed after being accused of plotting to overthrow his nephew North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has fired his vice premier, compared him to a goat and railed against “incompetent” officials, state media reported yesterday, in a rare and very public broadside against apparatchiks at the opening of a critical factory. Vice Premier Yang Sung-ho was sacked “on the spot,” the state-run Korean Central News Agency said, in a speech in which Kim attacked “irresponsible, rude and incompetent leading officials.” “Please, comrade vice premier, resign by yourself when you can do it on your own before it is too late,” Kim reportedly said. “He is ineligible for an important duty. Put simply, it was
US President Donald Trump on Saturday warned Canada that if it concludes a trade deal with China, he would impose a 100 percent tariff on all goods coming over the border. Relations between the US and its northern neighbor have been rocky since Trump returned to the White House a year ago, with spats over trade and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney decrying a “rupture” in the US-led global order. During a visit to Beijing earlier this month, Carney hailed a “new strategic partnership” with China that resulted in a “preliminary, but landmark trade agreement” to reduce tariffs — but
RSS