Cuba to drill for oil off the Florida coast next year and deeper than BP

IF WE DON’T DRILL, CUBA WILL
While Miami-Dade county commissioners proudly recite as a triumph their support to the federal moratorium on offshore oil and gas drilling, Cuba is not going to be deterred by the BP accident or by the global warming alarmists and will start drilling for oil deeper than BP. Offshore drilling moratoria cost jobs. Cuba’s exploratory rigs could start working next year just miles off the Florida coast:

	“Cuba is expected to begin drilling offshore for oil and gas as soon as next year with equipment that will go deeper than the Deepwater Horizon rig that exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, industry experts say. The Spanish energy company, Repsol, which drilled an exploratory well in 2004 off the coast near Havana, has contracted to drill the first of several exploratory wells with a semi-submersible rig that is expected to arrive in Cuba at the end of the year, said Jorge Piñon, an energy expert and visiting research fellow at the Cuban Research Institute at Florida International University. He said the rig is expected to drill down 5,600 feet in an area about 22 miles north of Havana and 65 miles south of the Marquesas Keys.  The development comes as 20 Cuban scientists joined their American and Mexican counterparts at the Mote Marine Laboratory in Sarasota this week to finalize a long-term marine research and conservation plan for the three countries.	Oil refinery in Santa Cruz del Norte in Havana, Cuba. (AFP)
	Luis Alberto Barreras Cañizo, who led the Cuban delegation as a representative of Cuba’s Ministry of Science, Technology and the Environment, confirmed the plans for exploration. “Cuba needs to find its oil, it’s a resource Cuba needs,” he told the Bradenton Herald in an interview.  Environmentalists suggested the prospect of rigs just 45 miles from Florida’s coastline could intensify pressure for the Obama administration to engage in talks with its Cold War antagonist to prevent ecological damage. […]  [I]t took Cuba time to secure a rig that didn’t violate the U.S. trade embargo against Cuba — which prevent vessels with more than 10 percent U.S. parts from operating in Cuba. He said the Italian rig, the Scarabeo 9, has a blow out preventer manufactured in the U.S. It is expected to drill as many as nine other wells off Cuba’s coast.
Green revolutionaries are destroying us!