Truth About Cuban Oil is Trickling Out

http://www.capitolhillcubans.com/

After endless debate and speculation about the Castro regime's latest offshore oil drilling partnership with Spain's Repsol (don't forget they unsuccessfully explored together in 2004), it seems some truths are finally trickling out.

For example, what happened to the specter of a catastrophic environmental disaster affecting Florida's coasts -- similar to that of the BP Macondo spill?

Well, the U.S. Coast Guard, along with several state, federal, county and wildlife agencies, have now concluded (after various simulation exercises):

"[T]hat even under intense weather conditions and high seas, oil from the damaged platform would take at least a week to reach the Middle Keys by way of the Gulf Stream. And by the time the oil got here, it would result in more of a cleanup nuisance than the type of ecological disaster seen on the shores of Louisiana in the aftermath of the DeepWater Horizon/BP oil spill two years ago this week [...]

Jim Jeansonne (of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) said the only way his team was able to get the fictional oil to come to the Middle Keys using computer models was to calculate sustained 34-knot winds for several days coming out of the southeast. He said it would be as if a tropical storm was off the Keys on the Atlantic side and did not move for days.

'The probability is low, which is good,' Jeansonne said.

He said the team also calculated scenarios where oil reached Key West and the Lower Keys, but he called the chances of that ever happening from a disaster on the Scarabeo 9 'even more remote.'"

In other words, it was all a ploy -- as in the past -- by the Castro regime's cheerleaders trying to "scare" Congress into lifting sanctions.

As a matter of fact, what is the biggest obstacle to Cuba's offshore oil exploration?

According to the Castro regime's own energy expert, Manuel Marrero Faz, the obstacle is what he described (during a hydrocarbon conference last week in Havana), "as the ruthless economic, financial and U.S. trade sanctions with Cuba."

Isn't that a shame.

And by the way, how is Repsol's latest exploration with the Castro regime going?

Apparently, not so good:

"Drilling of the first well in the long-awaited exploration of Cuba's offshore oilfields has gone slower than expected, but should be completed by mid-May, sources close to the project said.

They said drillers had encountered harder rock beneath the sea bed than expected, which combined with other minor problems, had slowed progress."

Those are very expensive problems.