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Posted on 08/12/2014 5:29:23 AM PDT by thackney
Cuba has shifted its focus away from offshore oil, concentrating on renewable energy and improving output from onshore wells due to a lack of interest by foreign companies for further deepwater exploration,...
With so much oil readily available around the world, oil companies...see little incentive in drilling off the Caribbean island, delaying the Cuban dream of oil wealth that could inject vigor into its socialist revolution...
Russia's state-run Rosneft and the China National Petroleum Company separately agreed last month to help Communist-run Cuba extract more oil along the traditional northwest heavy oil belt, but did not sign on to deepwater exploration.
The northwest heavy oil belt is a 200-mile stretch of the northern coast from Havana to Villa Clara and reaching up to 3 miles offshore. It produces poor quality oil that meets 40 percent of the country's needs.
Rosneft and CNPC will also support the horizontal drilling of new wells from shore and join Canadian firm Sherritt International and another Russian state-run oil company, Zarubezhneft, which are already carrying out similar work.
Cuba had hoped Russia and China,...would explore deepwater offshore fields that it says may hold 20 billion barrels of oil and end its dependence on socialist ally Venezuela.
Venezuela sends 115,000 barrels of oil per day to Cuba under favorable terms.
"The Cubans have stopped talking about offshore oil exploration in the state-run media and in private appear more interested in new recovery methods for existing wells, biogas projects and windmill farms," a European diplomat said.
Three deepwater wells drilled in 2012 by Spanish, Norwegian, Indian, Malaysian, Russian and Venezuelan firms came up dry. All but the Norwegian state firm Statoil ASA and Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA have pulled out, and those companies are inactive. Future drilling has been postponed for the foreseeable future.
(Excerpt) Read more at rigzone.com ...
Today, Cuba. Tomorrow, Pennsylvania
I have it on good authority that some of the major players in the shale natural gas business are preparing to bug out of PA if Tom Wolf gets elected Governor and imposes his extraction tax to “fully fund public education”.
Any increase in a targeted tax reduces the amount of business in the target crosshairs.
If they just had a little more money they could get all the kids educamacated 100%. Money = learning, just ask any homeschooling family.
Strangling the Golden Goose yet again.
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