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Cuba open to U.S. oil investment; preparing for peak oil
Original: Fidel: Reflections on the Real World
Elsy Fors, Prensa Latina
… According to Robert Sandels of Cuba-L Analysis news service housed at the University of New Mexico, Cuba´s oil potential has put US oil giants on a collision course with the blockade policy as the global energy crisis marches on.
…On the other hand, as the peak oil-horizon moves closer, Oil Gas Review magazine warns that the struggle for oil would take place in poor countries, where the trend is toward tighter state control over their natural resources.
… Cuba would be only too happy to open up to US investment in oil and other industries. The sanctions and restrictions come from an administration sequestered by the Miami-based mafia of hard-core exiles.
…Cuba has an energy policy whose core concept is to rely less and less on hydrocarbons and give greater space in the energy balance to renewable sources like solar, wind, tide and water. Cuba has put in place a conservation system that starts at house level and continues to the public sector and cooperative farms, by substituting incandescent lamps by fluorescent bulbs, distributing energy-saving household appliances and revamping the national power grid.
In the United States, however, there are several approaches to energy policy. While backing up the construction of six new nuclear power plants, Bush is set on an ethanol-producing race that already has pushed up the prices of corn, cereals, eggs and meat.
He is trying to convince Central and South American countries to boost corn, sugar cane and any other ethanol-producing crop so they may supply the US market with that fuel which has already doubled the price of corn and tortillas in Central America while increasing the price of land in Brazil.
In conclusion, the current US energy policy mix favors the expanded use of coal, building nuclear plants, subsidizing ethanol made from food and drilling in the US Exclusive Economic Zone, all of which goals render no favor to nature or to future generations.
(8 June 2007)
Presumably this story appearing in Cuba’s Prensa Latina reflects the policy of the Cuban government. Author Elsy Fors is a Cuban journalist. -BA
Energy in Cuba: A Light at the End of the Tunnel
Patricia Grogg, IPS
The government announcement that electricity supplies in Cuba now exceed demand during the hours of peak consumption was received with a collective sigh of relief by Cubans, who have not forgotten the frequent and lengthy blackouts that occurred, especially during the summertime, two or three years ago.
“I don’t even want to think of vacations like the ones we had in 2004, when the power outages began again,” said Caridad Hernández, who has two school-age children. She was talking about the severe energy crisis triggered by breakdowns in the Guiteras thermoelectric plant in the western part of the country, the main power plant.
Blackouts have a heavy impact on families. “If there is no power, we don’t have water either, because the pumps are electric. And when the outages are lengthy, there is no gas here either. Add to all of that the hot temperatures of July and August,” said Hernández.
Fans are a necessity, not a luxury item, during Cuba’s hot summer months, when power outages also make preserving food a major challenge.
But this summer, power cuts will not be a major problem for the Hernández’s, except for the sporadic outages caused by the ongoing efforts to upgrade the power grid, which lead to occasional interruptions in services.
…That year’s power outages recalled the worst moments of the crisis of the 1990s, when the cutoff of the annual supplies of 13 million tons of oil from the now-defunct Soviet Union cut energy output in half.
The crisis, which lasted through 2005, forced the government to temporarily close down a large number of factories and adopt strict energy saving measures, as part of a strategy that included the replacement of high energy consumption equipment with more modern equipment, such as the replacement of incandescent light bulbs with fluorescent bulbs.
…Cuba hopes to diversify its energy options by developing renewable sources. But for now it basically continues to depend on oil, over half of which is imported from Venezuela, which supplies this Caribbean island nation with 98,000 barrels a day of crude.
…Oil and gas production is expected to increase this year with the drilling of 39 new wells, 13 by Cuban state companies and 26 in joint ventures with foreign firms, including Sherritt International.
(8 June 2007)
