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I'm an expat Californian who is obsessed with traveling to strange and exotic destinations in the former Communist Bloc. I also like tacos, beer, surfing, trapshooting, and the geopolitics of oil. I currently live in Arlington, Virginia and work in Washington, DC. Read more about me here, check out my photo album, or send me an e-mail.

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    Russian oil companies to explore off Cuba


    Maybe:

    Russian oil companies could soon begin searching for oil in deep Gulf of Mexico waters off Cuba, a top diplomat said just days before Russian President Dmitry Medvedev visits the island.

    Russian oil companies have “concrete projects” for drilling in Cuba’s part of the gulf, said Mijail Kamynin, Russia’s ambassador to Cuba, to the state-run business magazine Opciones.

    Kamynin also said Russian companies would like to help build storage tanks for crude oil and to modernize Cuban pipelines, as well as play a role in Venezuelan efforts to refurbish a Soviet-era refinery in the port city of Cienfuegos, according the article published this weekend.

    [...]

    Washington’s nearly 50-year-old trade embargo prohibits U.S. companies from investing on the island. But Cuba’s state-run oil concern has signed joint operating agreements with companies from several countries to explore waters that Cuban scientists claim could contain reserves of up to 20 billion barrels of oil.

    Remind me again…this trade embargo is useful because? Oh, right…it’s not. We have just allowed our Cuba policy to be hijacked by some bitter old dudes in Miami. Meanwhile, U.S. companies can’t invest in lucrative opportunities there, and I can’t fly down and enjoy a mojito and frita. Dear Obama: Please get rid of this useless embargo.


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