CHINESE TAP BILLIONS OF BARRELS OFF THE COAST OF FLORIDA

[Eldon]

WHILE AMERICA TWIDDLES THUMBS, CHINESE TAP BILLIONS OF BARRELS OFF THE COAST OF FLORIDA

CHINA STARTS OIL DRILLING OFF FLORIDA
WHILE AMERICA TWIDDLES THUMBS, CHINESE TAP BILLIONS OF BARRELS

While Washington dithers over exploiting oil and gas reserves off the coast of Florida, China has seized the opportunity to gobble up these deposits, which run throughout Latin America, the Caribbean and along the U.S. Gulf coast.

The Chinese have forged a deal with Cuban leader Fidel Castro to explore and tap into massive oil reserves almost within sight of Key West, Florida. At the same time, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who controls the largest oil reserves in the Western Hemisphere, is making deals to sell his country’s oil to China, oil that is currently coming to the United States.

Meanwhile, a new left-wing populist regime in Bolivia has nationalized the natural gas industry, threatening to cut off supplies to the United States.

SLANT DRILLING

There are new reports out circulating that Chinese firms are planning to slant drill off the Cuban coast near the Florida Straits, tapping into U.S. oil reserves that are estimated at 4.6 billion to 9.3 billion barrels. This compares with 4 billion to 10 billion barrels believed to be beneath the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge, where drilling is held up in Congress due to the objections of environmental groups which warn of endangering caribou. Permission to drill in the refuge, which experts are certain will not present any environmental hazard, has failed by just two votes in the Senate.

As Chinese business increases its reach around the world, it is seeking oil, which it lacks domestically.

After elections in Mexico in early July, when a new regime hostile to Washington is expected to take power, the United States might be without supplies of Mexican crude oil. The United States gets about 40 percent of its imported oil from Mexico and Venezuela.

China is eager to tap into oil reserves in the Florida Straits and then make a deal with Castro to control it. The Chinese have already reopened an abandoned Russian oil refinery in Cuba. Much of the gas refined there is believed to be destined for Freeport in the Bahamas, where the Chinese, through front company Hutchison-Whampoa, has developed a massive port facility and airfield.

With the refinery reopened and expanded it will also meet the needs of Castro.

Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho) has introduced legislation to ease U.S. restrictions that prevent dealing with Cuba to drill in the Florida Straits. It is hoped that Florida regulations that prevent U.S. oil drilling off the state’s coasts could also be eased.

The irony is that Chinese drilling could be even more of an environmental hazard since China is not as concerned about or equipped to deal with any potential ecological disaster as a result of a spill, said Craig.    

[240 is Back]

"There are new reports out circulating that Chinese firms are planning"


Is this definitely true?  I thought yesterday there was some retraction about it?

is this definitely confirmed?

[OzmO]

ENERGY

China-Cuba rumors fuel renewed offshore drilling debate

BY LESLEY CLARK AND ERIKA BOLSTAD
lclark@MiamiHerald.com
WASHINGTON -- With gas topping $4 a gallon, some Republicans are pointing to Cuba once again to bolster their case that the U.S. should be drilling along Florida's coastline.

The claim: China has Cuban leases to drill for oil -- miles from the Florida shore.

Even Vice President Dick Cheney got into the mix Wednesday, telling the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that ``oil is being drilled right now 60 miles off the coast of Florida. We're not doing it. The Chinese are in cooperation with the Cuban government.

''Even the communists have figured out that a good answer to high prices is more supply,'' he added. ``Yet Congress has said . . . no to drilling off Florida.''

But industry experts and other observers say there is zero evidence that China is drilling in Cuban waters, and doesn't even hold a lease to drill offshore.

''China is not drilling in Cuba's Gulf of Mexico waters, period,'' said Jorge Piñon, an energy expert at the University of Miami's Center for Hemispheric Policy.

Rising gas prices are prompting renewed efforts to open Florida waters to drilling, and the specter of oil-thirsty China slurping up nearby reserves is helping to fuel the push: In recent days, House Republican leaders have penned newspaper opinion pieces making the claim.

`DEBUNKING THE MYTH'

The renewed efforts prompted Florida Sen. Mel Martinez, who opposes drilling off Florida's coast, to take to the Senate floor Wednesday to -- as his office put it -- ''debunk the myth'' of China drilling in Cuban waters.

''Reports to the contrary are simply false,'' Martinez said, his remarks delivered just before Cheney spoke. ``They are akin to urban legends. China drilling off the coast of Cuba only 60 miles from the Keys, that is not taking place. . . Any talk of using some fabricated Cuba-China connection as an argument to change U.S. policy has no merit.''

House Minority Leader John Boehner's office defended the GOP drilling claims, pointing to a 2006 New York Times story that noted Cuba had ``negotiated lease agreements with China and other energy-hungry countries to extract resources.''

''The fact is China can drill off the coast of the United States and Americans can't,'' said Boehner spokesman Michael Steel. ``At a time when the nationwide average price for a gallon of gas is over $4, that policy just doesn't make sense.''

The latest effort to bring drilling closer to Florida's shores by lifting a decades-old ban on gas and oil exploration along the outer continental shelf was rapidly defeated Wednesday in a House subcommittee meeting along partisan lines. Democrats on the panel said the measure was ''unnecessary'' because most of the known reserves along the coast are already open for drilling. Committee Chairman Rep. Norm Dicks, a Washington state Democrat, noted that the Bush administration, too, opposes lifting the ban.

PUSHING THE MEASURE

But Rep. John Peterson, a Pennsylvania Republican, said he plans to keep pushing the measure, which would allow drilling 50 miles beyond the shoreline.

Florida's congressional delegation remains staunchly opposed to offshore drilling, and Martinez noted the delegation had reached a compromise in December 2006 to give up eight million acres in the Gulf of Mexico in exchange for the state getting at least a 125-mile buffer zone from drilling.

Piñon, who supports oil and gas exploration, said he met with several congressional offices Wednesday about the China-Cuba connection. He said he told them: ' `If you guys want to use this as a scare tactic to lift the moratorium on drilling off the west coast of Florida, at least be factual, be correct.' They didn't do their homework.''

China's Sinopec oil company does have an agreement with the Cuban government to develop onshore resources west of Havana, Piñon said. The Chinese have done some seismic testing, he said, but no drilling. Western diplomats in Havana told McClatchy that to the best of their knowledge there is no Chinese drilling offshore.

Cuba's state oil company, Cupet, has issued exploration contracts to companies from India, Canada, Spain, Malaysia and Norway. But many oil companies from those countries have expressed reservations about how to turn potential crude oil into product. Cuba doesn't have the refinery capacity, and the biggest potential market -- the U.S. -- is off limits because of the trade embargo.

McClatchy Washington Bureau reporters Kevin Hall and David Lightman contributed to this report.
http://www.miamiherald.com/campaign08/story/567156.html

[Straw Man]

No matter how many times it get's repeated it's still NOT TRUE


http://www.miamiherald.com/news/americas/story/569216.html
Posted on Fri, Jun. 13, 2008
I goofed, Cheney says, on Cuba comment

Vice President Dick Cheney's office has acknowledged that he was mistaken when he asserted that China, at Cuba's behest, is drilling for oil in waters 60 miles from the Florida coast.
In a speech to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Cheney said on Wednesday that waters in the eastern Gulf of Mexico, long off limits to oil companies, should be opened to drilling because China is already there pumping oil.

''Oil is being drilled right now 60 miles off the coast of Florida,'' the vice president said. ``We're not doing it, the Chinese are, in cooperation with the Cuban government. Even the communists have figured out that a good answer to high prices is more supply.''

He cited his source as columnist George Will, who last week wrote: ``Drilling is under way 60 miles off Florida. The drilling is being done by China, in cooperation with Cuba, which is drilling closer to South Florida than U.S. companies are.''

Congressional Democrats pounced on the vice president's remarks and were backed up by independent energy experts, who called the assertion hyperbole at best and a falsehood at worst.

Cheney's office said in a statement to The Associated Press Thursday that the vice president had erred.

''It is our understanding that, although Cuba has leased out exploration blocks 60 miles off the coast of southern Florida, which is closer than American firms are allowed to operate in that area, no Chinese firm is drilling there,'' according to the statement.

Cuba clearly is interested in developing its deep-water oil resources, estimated at more than five billion barrels, including areas within 60 miles of Key West, energy experts said.

Jorge Pinon, a senior energy fellow at the University of Miami specializing in Latin America, said Cuba has awarded offshore oil leases, or concessionary blocs, in its offshore waters to six oil companies -- none of them Chinese -- and soon may announce an agreement with Brazil's state oil company, Petrobras.

''But no one is currently drilling in any of those concessions,'' said Pinon in a telephone interview. Pinon, who supports drilling in the eastern Gulf and believes it can be done without hurting the environment, said China is being raised as an unnecessary ''boogeyman'' by drilling proponents.

''There is no actual drilling yet. ... There is exploration,'' said Johanna Mendelson-Forman, a senior fellow on energy and Latin America at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

She said China's oil company, Sinopac, has conducted exploratory drilling on a lease on land in western Cuba, but is not involved in the offshore development.

But talk of China drilling in waters within 50 miles to 60 miles of Key West has been a common theme among Republicans. They are clamoring to open more of the country's offshore waters to energy development, including the eastern Gulf where drilling is strongly opposed by Florida officials.

''China, thanks to a lease issued by Cuba, is drilling for oil just 50 miles from Florida's coast,'' Rep. George Radanovich, R-Calif., recently wrote in The Modesto Bee in California, arguing for opening waters that have been off limits for 25 years to U.S. companies.

Radanovich's office said the congressman was in transit and not immediately available Thursday.

House Republican leader John Boehner of Ohio, calling for more domestic oil production, declared, ``right at this moment some 60 miles or less off the coast of Key West, Fla., China has the green light to drill for oil.''

''Even China recognizes that oil and natural gas is readily available off our shores, thanks to Fidel Castro,'' complained Rep. Roy Blunt of Missouri, a leader of a GOP energy task force.

Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., accused the Republicans of pushing oil development by ''scaring up the ghosts of communism and xenophobia'' and ``perpetuating a myth that China is drilling off the coast of Florida.''
 


 

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© 2008 Miami Herald Media Company. All Rights Reserved.
http://www.miamiherald.com

[OzmO]

Yeah, and Obama is a commy and Michelle hates America   

[Straw Man]

Yeah, and Obama is a commy and Michelle hates America   

yet things like this keep getting repeated because the neocons know a certain segment of their more credulous followers will believe anything they hear ..... and usually the more ridiculous the more likely they are to believe without question

[240 is Back]

Our vice-president, the second-most powerful man in the world, is now getting his intel from a columnist?

We're supposed to believe that the world's biggest threat, China, is setting up oil digging in US backyard - hell, the fact they had any kind of foothold that close woudl be brekaing news - we're supposed to believe Cheney 'goofed' and got bad info?

Please.  He planted it because the rumor of it gets 100x the coverage that the retraction will get.  And he did it the same day bush/mccain called for drilling.  He intentionally dropped that info.  Or, he's highly highly irresponsible to just casually drop that kinda mistake from the most powerful pulpit in the world.

[Straw Man]

Our vice-president, the second-most powerful man in the world, is now getting his intel from a columnist?

nothing new here - usually he or one of his staff give the the bullshit de jure to Bill Kristol and then Cheney quotes the resulting story as fact