Oil talks show potential for U.S.-Cuba relations
The U.S. and Cuba held their highest-level diplomatic talks in nearly 40 years in recent days, the latest development in efforts by Washington and Havana to end their decades-long freeze in diplomatic and commercial relations.
These meetings in Havana, led by Assistant Secretary of State Roberta Jacobson and her Cuban counterpart, Josefina Vidal, understandably attracted widespread attention, far more so than earlier discussions between U.S. and Cuban officials over oil drilling. But those oil talks, like bilateral consultations on migration and other issues, illustrate the potential for greater collaboration between the two countries.
Since 2012, representatives of the U.S. State Department, the Coast Guard and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have met with counterparts from the Cuban government, as well as from Mexico, Bahamas and Jamaica, to consider how best to respond to an oil spill in the north Caribbean, including off Cuba’s coast. The meetings, in Bahamas, Jamaica, Mexico and the U.S., were prompted by worries over the explosion of BP’s Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, and the potential for a similar disaster among drilling projects in Cuban waters, fewer than 100 miles from Florida.
Those drilling efforts by Brazil’s Petrobras, Spain’s Repsol, Malaysia’s Petronas and Petroleos de Venezuela, came up dry, and any resumption in exploration soon is unlikely, given the declines in oil prices and oil-company spending. But concerns over the potential for a Macondo-like accident in Cuban waters whenever drilling begins there again remain for the U.S. as well as Cuba.
“Many said this was going to make oil barons out of the Castros,” Lee Hunt, the former president of the International Association of Drilling Contractors, told me the other day. Hunt helped organize and pay for the workshops, first as head of IADC and then privately after his retirement from the trade group in 2012.
“Well, you can take that line of thought, but in fact assisting the Cubans with offshore safety was really mostly in the interests of the United States, in terms of ecological and economic interests,” said Hunt, who was in Washington for a meeting with José Cabañas Rodríguez, Cuba’s top diplomat in the U.S.
At a minimum, Hunt said, the meetings have broadened understanding between U.S. and Cuban officials of the resources available in each country to respond to an oil spill, and made it easier for the two governments to communicate with each other in the event of an accident.
That said, the U.S. economic embargo against Cuba still restricts the island nation’s access to American companies and technology to respond to an oil spill and, for that matter, U.S. companies’ opportunities to participate in future Cuban oil development.
“They are eager to continue their work on oil development, and say they will evaluate exploration sites and opportunities in 2015,” Hunt said. “They do have definite plans to initiate a new offshore drilling campaign during 2016, 2017. So, now is the time to continue with these multilateral discussions, to be absolutely prepared for those events rather than waiting for them to come about and trying to cope with them.”
Mexico has offered to hold another oil safety workshop this year, and Cuba wants to host one, too, according to Hunt. Past offers by Havana to do so were met with “smiles” at the State Department but no approvals to send U.S. officials, he said. But now, with Jacobson’s visit to Cuba, Hunt is hopeful that State would respond differently.
* Bill Loveless is a veteran energy journalist and television commentator in Washington. He is a former host of the TV program Platts Energy Week.
(From the: USA TODAY)
