http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/SciTech/20120131/cuba-offshore-drilling-oil-spill-preparations-120131/

Tuesday Jan. 31, 2012

The Associated Press
Date: Tuesday Jan. 31, 2012 9:51 AM ET

MIAMI – The U.S. is not ready to handle an oil spill if drilling off the Cuban coast should go awry but can be better prepared with monitoring systems and other basic steps, experts told government officials Monday.

The comments at a congressional subcommittee hearing in the Miami Beach suburb of Sunny Isles come more than a week after a huge oil rig leased by Spanish energy giant Repsol YPF arrived in Cuban waters to begin drilling a deep water exploratory well.

Similar development is expected off the Bahamas next year, but decades of tense relations between the U.S. and Cuba makes co-operation in protecting the Florida Straits particularly tricky. With memories of the Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico still fresh, state and federal officials fear even the perception of any oil flowing toward Florida beaches could devastate an economy that claims about $57 billion from tourism.

Florida International University Professor John Proni told officials to be proactive. He is leading a consortium of researchers on U.S. readiness to handle any spill.

“For the last few years, my colleagues and I have been visiting Washington to say the best time to start preparing for an oil spill is before it happens,” Proni told leaders of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.

U.S. officials have turned attention to preventing future spills since the Deepwater Horizon rig leased by the energy company BP exploded in April 2010, causing the well to blow out and unleashing millions of gallons (litres) of oil in the Gulf of Mexico. Crude washed up on pristine shoreline, soiled wildlife and left a region dependent on tourist dollars scrambling to rebuild its image.

Coast Guard officials said Monday they didn’t know if drilling off Cuba had begun.

Experts testified current estimates have surface oil — in event of any spill off Cuba — moving up to 3 mph (5 kph) due to the Gulfstream, but that the fast-moving current would make it difficult for any crude quickly crossing the Florida Straits.

Rear Adm. William Baumgartner, commander of the Coast Guard region that covers the Florida Straits, said a likely scenario would have oil spreading and reaching U.S. waters in six to 10 days.
Proni said he wants a system that can monitor changes in underwater sounds to immediately alert U.S. officials to a spill or other unusual activity. He also wants the U.S. to invest in developing better computer models to predict oil movement and to assess the existing ecosystem and the type of oil Cuba possesses. That way, experts can better pinpoint any possible damage and find out if it came from Cuban wells.

Proni said the fast-moving water would make it difficult to burn the oil or strain it, as was done to halt the spread of the Deepwater Horizon spill. He added that more research is needed on the risks of using chemicals that break down the oil into tiny droplets.

Baumgartner said his agency has been working on a response plan. The Coast Guard and private response teams have been granted the required visas under the U.S. embargo to work with the Cuban government and its partners should a problem arise. Since March 2011, the agency has been working with Repsol, and U.S. officials inspected the rig earlier this month.

The rig was given a good bill of health.

Jackie Savitz a senior scientist with the non-profit Oceana, who attended the hearing, said she was glad lawmakers were so concerned but hoped they would express similar interest in offshore drilling in areas such as the Gulf of Mexico, where many rigs are already drilling for oil.

U.S. Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, one of three South Florida Cuban-American lawmakers who attended the hearing, said the concerns over Cuba’s oil exploration were particularly pressing because of the political context and hopes the Obama administration would quickly respond to the consortium’s concerns. But he agreed Proni’s proposals could be applied to the Gulf of Mexico too.

Meanwhile, U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, has authored a bill that would sanction those who help Cuba develop its oil reserves.

“We can’t stop Repsol from drilling now, but we can act to deter future leaders to avoid the Castro brothers becoming the oil tycoons of the Caribbean,” she told the committee.

Read more: http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/SciTech/20120131/cuba-offshore-drilling-oil-spill-preparations-120131/#ixzz1l3SELMVx

Special thanks to Richard Charter

Did Cuba’s Plan to Drill Near Florida Prompt President’s Pivot on Offshore Oil and Gas?

by JACKIE MOREAU on JANUARY 31, 2012

While Republican Party candidates face a political drilling in the Florida primaries, Florida prepares for the offshore drilling by a Spanish company just miles away from its coastline, courtesy of our embargoed neighbor to the South. Cuba has signed lease agreements for offshore drilling blocks with six nations in the North Cuba Basin, a body of water within the Cuban Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) that is believed to harbor at least 4.6 billion barrels of crude oil. Five of the six companies are owned by foreign countries: India, Venezuela, Malaysia, Vietnam and Angola. Spanish-based Repsol, the single private company, will drill one exploratory well in the North Cuba Basin, called the Jaguey Prospect, lying about 55 to 60 miles south of Key West, FL. It owns a 40% share in the newest exploratory well, while India’s Oil and Natural Gas Corp. and Norway’s Statoil each hold a 30% stake. Repsol has contracted the Italian-owned Scarabeo-9, a mobile offshore drilling unit (MODU), to drill the Jaguey well.

In March 2010, President Obama introduced a plan for drilling to take place 125 miles from Florida’s Gulf coastline. Only weeks later, the President’s offshore drilling proposal was shelved due to the Deepwater Horizon spill. Since then, the administration has been largely hostile to existing deep water drilling offshore in American waters-first, it imposed a de jure moratorium, and, after that, it imposed a de facto moratorium via bureaucratic foot dragging.

In a surprise move, the President seemed to pivot on offshore drilling policy in last Tuesday’s State of the Union Address. Specifically, he announced a plan to open 75 % of potential offshore oil and gas reserves. Details of the plan are still scarce, so we still don’t know what it entails exactly. One must wonder if the President’s wind of change was prompted by the fact that companies from five nations are drilling for oil and gas in such close proximity to Florida.

Special thanks to Richard Charter

Posted on Thursday, 01.26.12

With Scarabeo 9, a Spanish company’s leased oil rig, in place for exploratory drilling off the Cuban coast, response plans are being firmed up in case a spill reaches the United States.

BY MIMI WHITEFIELD
MWHITEFIELD@MIAMIHERALD.COM
The Scarabeo 9 is a state-of the-art oil rig leased by a Spanish company, built in China and Singapore, owned by an Italian company and flagged in the Bahamas. But there’s one part of its international pedigree that has some Floridians up in arms: it will be exploring for oil in Cuban waters.

After traveling half-way around the world, the rig has moved into place some 22 miles north of Havana and about 70 miles south of the Florida Keys. Repsol, the Spanish company that is leasing the rig for $511,000 day, said drilling begins this week.

But already, without finding a drop of oil, the hulking Scarabeo 9 has become one of the most analyzed, discussed and vilified rigs to ever sink an exploratory well.

Not only has its location raised fears that a blowout could dump oil on Florida’s beaches, damaging sensitive mangroves, sea grass, coral reefs and marine life but the U.S. embargo against Cuba has made preparedness and recovery from a possible oil spill particularly tricky.

While efforts by Cuban-American members of Congress to prevent Repsol from drilling altogether have been unsuccessful, there are still several bills pending that could complicate the company’s efforts.

“The political pressure on [Repsol] is unbelievable,” said Jorge Piñon, a former Amoco executive and now an oil consultant and visiting research fellow at Florida International University.

But with the rig now in place, the question has become how prepared are the United States, Cuba and Repsol to respond if disaster strikes?

Much of any U.S. response effort would be centered in South Florida.

Not only would the Miami-based 7th Coast Guard District be responsible for coordinating efforts to protect U.S. waters and shoreline, but the first private response to a major spill would likely come from Clean Caribbean & Americas, a Broward County oil spill response cooperative whose members include most of the major oil companies in the region.

The cooperative and Oil Spill Response, its sister organization in the United Kingdom, did much of the work on Repsol’s Cuban contingency response plan. “I think it’s in line with what they have elsewhere in the world,” said Paul Schuler, the cooperative’s president.

Although the United States has no regulatory control over Repsol’s drilling in Cuba, the Spanish company has voluntarily provided information on its drilling plans and allowed U.S. agencies to board and review the rig’s construction and safety systems when it was off the coast of Trinidad & Tobago earlier this month.

The Coast Guard and Interior’s Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement said they found the rig “to generally comply with existing international and U.S. standards.”

Meanwhile, Clean Caribbean & Americas’ warehouse is loaded with containment booms, skimming devices, an aerial system designed to spray dispersants from a C-130 Hercules aircraft, and other cleanup supplies to respond to a spill anywhere in the region.

Unlike many U.S. companies that are barred by the embargo from doing business with Cuba, the cooperative already has a license from the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control that would allow it to respond to a Cuban oil spill. It got the license in 2003 when Repsol drilled its first exploratory well in Cuba, said Schuler.

Repsol found oil but said at the time it wasn’t commercially viable. Now, the Spanish oil company is back with partners from Norway (Statoil) and India (ONGC Videsh) in a slightly different location and its rig has been specially built so that fewer than 10 percent of its components are made by U.S. manufacturers.

“They are betting big money on this. When a company of Repsol’s caliber goes through the expense of having a rig tailor-made to bypass the embargo, it tells me the probability of a successful find is very high,” said Piñon.

That prospect isn’t pleasing to Cuban-American members of Congress, including Republican representatives Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, David Rivera and Mario Diaz-Balart, who have fought tooth-and-nail to stop any drilling in Cuban waters and blasted the Obama administration for not doing more to prevent it. Florida’s senators, Bill Nelson and Marco Rubio, support a bill that would make a foreign oil company directly responsible for a spill that impacts the U.S.

The U.S. Geographical Survey estimates that Cuba’s offshore oil fields may contain around 5 billion barrels of oil and 9.8 billion cubic feet of natural gas. Cuban geologists estimate there is even more.

Efforts are underway to issue more licenses to companies whose expertise is expected to be needed to protect U.S. shores.

“I’m concerned there is not enough manpower and capacity to respond if there were a need to do so in the near future,” said Dan Whittle, Cuba program director at the Environmental Defense Fund.

There also has been talk of a quick turnaround time for issuing more licenses at the time of a spill.

But Whittle, who just returned from a trip to Cuba last week, said that may not be quick enough. “Forty-eight hours is a lot of hours to waste in those currents. Common sense dictates that you need to have your ducks in a row well in advance,” he said.

“The more resources, we have the better we can respond,” said Schuler, who plans to visit Scarabeo 9 next week. Because of the embargo, he said, “We are now making plans on the equipment we can get – not what we would like to have.”

The embargo and political considerations also make talking directly with Cuba about its emergency response plan more complicated.

Instead, the United States has taken a multilateral approach involving all the countries in the region contemplating Caribbean drilling or that could be affected by a spill.

Officials from the Bahamas, Cuba, Mexico, Jamaica and the United States met in Nassau in December to discuss their well control and oil spill response plans. Another meeting has been proposed next week in Curacao.

Some who attended the meeting said despite the other nations present, the main dialogue was between Cuba and the United States.

Rear Adm. Bill Baumgartner, commander of the 7th Coast Guard district, said the Coast Guard has been planning for well over a year how it would handle any impact from drilling in Cuba and the Bahamas, which also may start offshore oil exploration this year.

The Coast Guard has revised its coastal contingency plans, analyzed reports and investigations from the Deepwater Horizon spill to see what lessons could be learned, and held training exercises.

In November, the Coast Guard hosted some 80 federal, state and local officials, industry representatives, including Repsol, and environmentalists for a tabletop exercise that looked at various scenarios for the flow of oil.

On Monday, the U.S. House Subcommittee on Coast Guard and Marine Transportation will hold a field hearing in Sunny Isles Beach to look at the Coast Guard’s oil spill readiness and response planning.

If there is a spill, Baumgartner said, “It’s unlikely the Florida coastline would be inundated with oil slicks.”

Fast-moving currents could sweep oil past the Florida coast and out to the North Atlantic, Baumgartner said. But eddy currents could peel off and bring oil ashore, he said. That could also happen if wind conditions are just right.

And there are scenarios that could take oil to Cuba’s north coast – the center of its growing tourism industry. Last year, Cuba had 2.7 million visitors and tourism has become a major part of its economy.

“I think they are taking this very seriously,” Whittle said. “The Cubans are fully aware of the environmental challenges and risks.”

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/01/26/v-fullstory/2610343/is-oil-drilling-in-cuban-waters.html#storylink=cpy

Special thanks to Richard Charter

http://blogs.wvgazette.com/watchdog/2012/01/27/word-play-gas-industry-protests-use-of-f-word-but-its-pr-machine-takes-advantage-of-focus-on-fracking/

January 27, 2012 by Ken Ward Jr.
In this Jan. 23, 2012 file photo, Gillie Waddington of Enfield, N.Y., raises a fist during rally against hydraulic fracturing of natural gas wells at the Legislative Office Building in Albany, N.Y. President Barack Obama the f- word during his recent State of the Union speech nor did he mention the technology used to get it, known commonly as fracking. That’s because the word has become a lightning rod. (AP Photo/Mike Groll, File)

Well, The Associated Press spent 888 words toying with whether the use of one word – ‘fracking’ was appropriate when the media covers the continuing controversies over natural gas drilling. The thrust of the story is that industry is upset with the phrase, and blamed environmental activists for the media’s continued use of it:

The word is “fracking” – as in hydraulic fracturing, a technique long used by the oil and gas industry to free oil and gas from rock.

It’s not in the dictionary, the industry hates it, and President Barack Obama didn’t use it in his State of the Union speech – even as he praised federal subsidies for it.
The word sounds nasty, and environmental advocates have been able to use it to generate opposition – and revulsion – to what they say is a nasty process that threatens water supplies.

“It obviously calls to mind other less socially polite terms, and folks have been able to take advantage of that,” said Kate Sinding, a senior attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council who works on drilling issues.

One of the chants at an anti-drilling rally in Albany earlier this month was “No fracking way!”

Industry executives argue that the word is deliberately misspelled by environmental activists and that it has become a slur that should not be used by media outlets that strive for objectivity.

“It’s a co-opted word and a co-opted spelling used to make it look as offensive as people can try to make it look,” said Michael Kehs, vice president for Strategic Affairs at Chesapeake Energy, the nation’s second-largest natural gas producer.

This is the kind of story that New York AP writers love – it will get a lot of play, ending up on front pages all around the country, just as it did here at the Gazette. But the story reminded me of a discussion a while back here on this blog in which our old buddy Bill Howley, author of The Power Line blog, about whether the right spelling is “fracking” or “fracing” and – more importantly – whether use of the phrase was leading to some fundamental misunderstandings about the potential dangers of the larger natural gas drilling and production process. Take a minute and go back to read the comments section of the previous post, Report ties ‘fracking’ to W.Va. well contamination and you’ll see what I’m talking about.

You see, environmental groups do love the word “fracking.” It makes for great signs and slogans and chants. From a public relations standpoint for them, it’s almost perfect. But the industry’s huge and growing PR machine, despite their protestations in this AP story, well, they like it to – because it’s allowed them to deflect the real issues about potential drinking water contamination into an almost absurd game of word play. Environmental groups have turned “fracking” into short-hand for the entire gas drilling and production process, and in some ways that’s given the industry a big advantage.

The main talking point for industry and its political friends regarding potential drinking water contamination from natural gas drilling and production has become this:

There are no documented cases of ground water contamination from hydraulic fracturing.

Friends, family and people effected by well water problems surround Craig Sautner as he speaks outside his home on Friday, Jan. 20, 2012 in Dimock, Pa. prior to a water delivery provided by The Enviromental Protection Agency. Under the authority of the Superfund law the EPA is delivering water to four homes and testing water at 61 homes in the Marcellus Shale gas drilling area in Susquehanna County. (AP Photo/Scranton Times & Tribune, Michael J. Mullen)

Now, maybe that’s true. Maybe it’s not. Regardless, the turn of phrase – making fracking and hydraulic fracturing the whole focus – has allowed questions about drinking water contamination to be unfairly dismissed by industry, its PR machine, lawmakers and even some regulators. And there is plenty of evidence that other parts of the process – particularly poorly done well casing jobs – has and can continue to lead to drinking water contamination. An expert panel appointed by the Obama administration explained it this way:

One of the commonly perceived risks from hydraulic fracturing is the possibility of leakage of fracturing fluid through fractures into drinking water. Regulators and geophysical experts agree that the likelihood of properly injected fracturing fluid reaching drinking water through fractures is remote where there is a large depth separation between drinking water sources and the producing zone. In the great majority of regions where shale gas is being produced, such separation exists and there are few, if any, documented examples of such migration. An improperly executed fracturing fluid injection can, of course, lead to surface spills and leakage into surrounding shallow drinking water formations. Similarly, a well with poorly cemented casing could potentially leak, regardless of whether the well has been hydraulically fractured.

Bill Howley probably explained it better in comments on this blog:

Casing failure is a real and continuing problem for the gas industry. Failed casings and cement jobs have been destroying water wells in West Virginia for over one hundred years, at well pressures far below those used in the 1987 Parsons incident. Sloppy and dangerous cementing caused the Macondo well blowout in the Gulf of Mexico.
There is extensive evidence, the Duke study being the latest, of contamination of water wells because of failed casing and cement work on Marcellus wells. This is a proven problem that needs to be dealt with now.

Searching for some holy grail that will prove direct migration of fracing fluids from gas formations to aquifers is a distraction from the real and immediate problem – sloppy and dangerous casing work. This problem has been with the gas industry from the beginning. The Marcellus drilling is different only because the fracing pressures are so much higher and because of the massive amounts of water injected into wells.

Getting caught up in whether “fracking” is the right word just takes time, energy, and newsprint away from focusing on the very real questions about the shale-gas drilling boom, including not only water pollution, but the long-term sustainability of this industry in terms of gas supply and global warming.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 27, 2012 at 9:02 am

Special thanks to Richard Charter

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2105598,00.html?xid=gonewsedit

By TIM PADGETT / MIAMI Friday, Jan. 27, 2012

A Chinese-built drilling rig, known as Scarabeo 9, is seen off the coast of Havana, January 21, 2012.
Desmond Boylan / Reuters

On Christmas Eve, a massive, Chinese-made maritime oil rig, the Scarabeo 9, arrived at Trinidad and Tobago for inspection. The Spanish oil company Repsol YPF, which keeps regional headquarters in Trinidad, ferried it to the Caribbean to perform deep-ocean drilling off Cuba – whose communist government believes as much as 20 billion barrels of crude may lie near the island’s northwest coast. But it wasn’t Cuban authorities who came aboard the Scarabeo 9 to give it the once-over: officials from the U.S. Coast Guard and Interior Department did, even though the rig won’t be operating in U.S. waters.

On any other occasion that might have raised the ire of the Cubans, who consider Washington their imperialista enemy. But the U.S. examination of the Scarabeo 9, which Repsol agreed to and Cuba abided, was part of an unusual choreography of cooperation between the two countries. Their otherwise bitter cold-war feud (they haven’t had diplomatic relations since 1961) is best known for a 50-year-long trade embargo and history’s scariest nuclear standoff. Now, Cuba’s commitment to offshore oil exploration – drilling may start this weekend – raises a specter that haunts both nations: an oil spill in the Florida Straits like the BP calamity that tarred the nearby Gulf of Mexico two years ago and left $40 billion in U.S. damages.

The Straits, an equally vital body of water that’s home to some of the world’s most precious coral reefs, separates Havana and Key West, Florida, by a mere 90 miles. As a result, the U.S. has tacitly loosened its embargo against Cuba to give firms like Repsol easier access to the U.S. equipment they need to help avoid or contain possible spills. “Preventing drilling off Cuba better protects our interests than preparing for [a disaster] does,” U.S. Senator Bill Nelson of Florida tells TIME, noting the U.S. would prefer to stop the Cuban drilling – but can’t. “But the two are not mutually exclusive, and that’s why we should aim to do both.”

Cuba meanwhile has tacitly agreed to ensure that its safety measures meet U.S. standards (not that U.S. standards proved all that golden during the 2010 BP disaster) and is letting unofficial U.S. delegations in to discuss the precautions being taken by Havana and the international oil companies it is contracting. No Cuban official would discuss the matter, but Dan Whittle, senior attorney for the Environmental Defense Fund in New York, who was part of one recent delegation, says the Cubans “seem very motivated to do the right thing.”

It’s also the right business thing to do. Cuba’s threadbare economy – President Raúl Castro currently has to lay off more than 500,000 state workers – is acutely energy-dependent on allies like Venezuela, which ships the island 120,000 barrels of oil per day. So Havana is eager to drill for the major offshore reserves geologists discovered eight years ago (which the U.S. Geological Survey estimates at closer to 10 billion bbl.). Cuba has signed or is negotiating leases with Repsol and companies from eight other nations – Norway, India, Malaysia, Vietnam, Brazil, Venezuela, Angola and China – for 59 drilling blocks inside a 43,000-sq.-mile (112,000 sq km) zone. Eventually, the government hopes to extract half a million bpd or more.

A serious oil spill could scuttle those drilling operations – especially since Cuba hasn’t the technology, infrastructure or means, like a clean-up fund similar to the $1 billion the U.S. keeps on reserve, to confront such an emergency. And there is another big economic anxiety: Cuba’s $2 billion tourism industry. “The dilemma for Cuba is that as much as they want the oil, they care as much if not more about their ocean resources,” says Billy Causey, southeast regional director for the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s marine sanctuary program. Cuba’s pristine beaches and reefs attract sunbathers and scuba divers the world over, and a quarter of its coastal environment is set aside as protected.

So is much of coastal Florida, where tourism generates $60 billion annually – which is why the state keeps oil rigs out of its waters. The Florida Keys lie as close as 50 miles from where Repsol is drilling; and they run roughly parallel to the 350-mile-long (560 km) Florida Reef Tract (FRT), the world’s third largest barrier reef and one of its most valuable ocean eco-systems. The FRT is already under assault from global warming, ocean acidification and overfishing of symbiotic species like parrotfish that keep coral pruned of corrosive algae. If a spill were to damage the FRT, which draws $2 billion from tourism each year and supports 33,000 jobs, “it would be a catastrophic event,” says David Vaughan, director of Florida’s private Mote Marine Laboratory.

Which means America has its own dilemma. As much as the U.S. would like to thwart Cuban petro-profits – Cuban-American leaders like U.S. Representative and House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Miami say the oil will throw a lifeline to the Castro dictatorship – it needs to care as much if not more about its own environment. Because fewer than a tenth of the Scarabeo 9’s components were made in America, Washington can’t wield the embargo cudgel and fine Repsol, which has interests in the U.S., for doing business with Cuba. (Most of the other firms don’t have U.S. interests.) Nor can it in good conscience use the embargo in this case to keep U.S. companies from offering spill prevention/containment hardware and services to Repsol and other drilling contractors.

One of those U.S. firms is Helix Energy Solutions in Houston. Amid the Gulf disaster, Helix engineered a “capping stack” to plug damaged blow-out preventers like the one that failed on BP’s Deepwater Horizon rig. (It later contained the spill.) Having that technology at hand – especially since the Cuba rigs will often operate in deeper waters than the Deepwater rig was mining – will be critical if a spill occurs off Cuba.
Helix has applied to the Treasury Department for a special license to lease its equipment, and speedily deliver it, to Cuba’s contractors when needed. The license is still pending, but Helix spokesman Cameron Wallace says the company is confident it will come through since Cuba won’t benefit economically from the arrangement. “This is a reasonable approach,” says Wallace. “We can’t just say we’ll figure out what to do if a spill happens. We need this kind of preparation.” Eco-advocates like Whittle agree: “It’s a no-brainer for the U.S.”

Preparation includes something the U.S.-Cuba cold-war time warp rarely allows: dialogue. Nelson has introduced legislation that would require federal agencies to consult Congress on how to work with countries like Cuba on offshore drilling safety and spill response, but the Administration has already shown some flexibility. Last month U.S. officials and scientists had contact with Cuban counterparts at a regional forum on drilling hazards. That’s important because they need to be in synch, for example, about how to attack a spill without exacerbating the damage to coral reefs. Scientists like Vaughan worry that chemical dispersants used to fight the spill in the Gulf, where coral wasn’t as prevalent, could be lethal to reefs in the Straits. That would breed more marine catastrophe, since coral reefs, though they make up only 1% of the world’s sea bottoms, account for up to 40% of natural fisheries. “They’re our underwater oases,” says Vaughan, whose tests so far with dispersants and FRT species like Elkhorn coral don’t augur well.

A rigid U.S. reluctance to engage communist Cuba is of course only half the problem. Another is Havana’s notorious, Soviet-style secrecy – which some fear “could override the need to immediately pick up the phone,” as one environmentalist confides, if and when a spill occurs. As a result, some are also petitioning Washington to fund AUVs (autonomous underwater vehicles) that marine biologists use to detect red tides, and which could also be used to sniff out oil spills in the Straits.

What experts on both sides of the Straits hope is that sea currents will carry any oil slick directly out into the Atlantic Ocean. But that’s wishful thinking. So probably is the notion that U.S.-Cuba cooperation on offshore drilling can be duplicated on other fronts. Among them are the embargo, including the arguably unconstitutional ban on U.S. travel to Cuba, which has utterly failed to dislodge the Castro regime but which Washington keeps in place for fear of offending Cuban-American voters in swing-state Florida; and cases like that of Alan Gross, a U.S. aid worker imprisoned in Cuba since 2009 on what many call questionable spying charges.

U.S. inspectors this month gave the Scarabeo 9 the thumbs-up. Meanwhile, U.S. pols hope they can still dissuade foreign oil companies from operating off Cuba. Last month Nelson and Cuban-American Senator Bob Menendez of New Jersey introduced a bill to hold firms financially responsible for spills that affect the U.S. even if they originate outside U.S. waters. (It would also lift a $75 million liability cap.) Others in Congress say Big Oil should be exempted from the embargo to let the U.S. benefit from the Cuba oil find too. Either way, the only thing likely to stop the drilling now would be the discovery that there’s not as much crude there as anticipated. That, or a major spill.

Special thanks to Richard Charter