Posted on 05/29/2012 12:49:57 PM PDT by thackney
Spanish company Repsol has said it is pulling out of Cuba after failing in a recent attempt to find oil off the island.
Chairman Antonio Brufau told journalists and investors that Repsol "won't do another" well in Cuba.
On 18 May Repsol announced an exploratory well it had drilled north of the Cuban coast had come up dry.
Cuba's communist government is relying on potentially huge oil and gas reserves to revive the economy.
Repsol's unsuccessful attempt, some 50km (31 miles) off the island, cost the company more than $100m (£155m).
The decision to stop operations in Cuba was announced at the firm's headquarters in Madrid at a briefing on Repsol's investment plans for the next four years.
"At this point we don't think it is worth continuing to drill, at least not in our blocs," said Repsol spokesman Kristian Rix.
He told the BBC that the decision to cease operations in Cuba was purely technical.
"Offshore drilling is very expensive and there is quite a risk involved. Four out of five attempts came out dry."
Continue reading the main story Start Quote
Offshore drilling is very expensive. We have decided it wasn't worth continuing
Kristian Rix Repsol spokesman Mr Rix said Repsol failed in a previous attempt to find oil off Cuba in 2004.
"Now we hit another dry well and we have decided it wasn't worth continuing. We are very unlikely to do another well there."
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.co.uk ...
But Cuba has more at stake, and only a few more spins left of the roulette wheel. The enormous Scarabeo-9 platform being used in the hunt is the only one in the world that can drill in Cuban waters without incurring sanctions under the U.S. economic embargo, and it is under contract for only one to four more exploratory wells before it heads off to Brazil.
If oil is not found now I think it would be another five to 10 years before somebody else comes back and drills again, said Jorge Pinon, the former president of Amoco Oil Latin America and a leading expert on Cubas energy prospects. Not because there is no oil, but because the pain and tribulations that people have to go through to drill in Cuba are not worth it when there are better and easier options in places like Angola, Brazil or the U.S. Gulf of Mexico.
http://fuelfix.com/blog/2012/05/28/cubas-oil-dreams-yet-to-materialize/
Learned their lesson in Argentina and not gonna give Fidel the opportunity to nationalize them the day after they strike a gusher...
Anti-capitalism has its costs.
Wait a minute, is he saying that socialists make it hard to do business? Is this some kind of an argument against Big Government?
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