 |
|
|
 News Around the Republic of Mexico | February 2006 
Oilmen Meet With Cubans in Mexico, but U.S. Intervenes
 Simon Romero - Nytimes
| | A meeting between Cuban officials and U.S. energy executives was moved to another hotel after the Sheraton Hotel in Mexico City, under pressure from the U.S. government, asked the Cubans to leave, the event's organizer said Saturday. |
Mexico City — United States government officials said Friday that they had asked the owner of a hotel here, which is part of an American corporation, to expel a Cuban delegation that was meeting with American oil executives.
The delegation later left the hotel.
The request was made by the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control, which told Starwood Hotels, the owner of the Sheraton Maria Isabel in Mexico City, that American law prohibited it from supplying services to Cuban individuals or companies. The move is the latest in what seems be a hardening by the Bush administration of the 45-year trade embargo against Cuba.
A spokeswoman for the Treasury Department, Molly Millerwise, said, "The hotel acted in accordance with U.S. sanctions."
A spokeswoman for Starwood Hotels, Nadeen Ayala, confirmed that the Treasury Department had asked the hotel "to have the Cuban nationals leave."
Cuban officials are trying to court American petroleum companies to produce oil in the nation's territorial waters after succeeding in attracting exploratory investments from Chinese, Indian and Norwegian energy companies. The meeting of largely Texan oil executives and elite bureaucrats from Havana began Thursday and was to conclude Saturday.
"It's outrageous that I, as an American citizen, can't go and talk to someone on Mexican soil," said Kirby Jones, a former World Bank official and the organizer of the meeting for the U.S.-Cuba Trade Association, a nonprofit group in Washington.
Mr. Jones said this was the 10th meeting he had organized between American business executives and Cuban officials, although it was the first to focus on opportunities for American energy companies in Cuba.
Previous meetings in Mexico between American agricultural companies and Cuban officials resulted in sales of American food products to Cuba.
This week's meeting, Mr. Jones said, was originally scheduled for December in Cancún, Mexico, but was rescheduled for Mexico City.
Other meetings had been held at hotels controlled by American companies, he said, including a hotel in Cancún, where the energy meeting was originally scheduled in December.
"This issue has never come up," Mr. Jones said. The American executives will try to meet with the Cubans at another location on Saturday.
Some of the largest American oil companies, including Exxon Mobil and the Valero Energy Corporation, had agreed to meet with Cuban officials on what was thought to be neutral ground at a hotel here in the cradle of Mexican capitalism, a short stroll on Paseo de la Reforma from a Starbucks, the United States Embassy and Mexico's stock exchange. The oil-importing Port of Corpus Christi and American shipping and oil field equipment companies also sent representatives.
"They're sensing a lost opportunity in their own backyard, less than 100 miles from the Florida coast," said Mr. Jones, the meeting's organizer, explaining that the companies were either planning to lobby for a relaxation of the embargo or gathering intelligence for a post-Castro future.
Although Cuba has suffered from energy shortages since the Soviet Union halted subsidized oil shipments more than a decade ago, its potential as an oil producer has caught attention.
According to the Energy Information Administration, Cuba's proven oil reserves of 750 million barrels exceed those of Sudan, an African nation that has lured large non-American investments to its oil industry despite American economic sanctions in place since 1997.
"Everything is on the table," said Alberto Wong Calvo, director of hydrocarbons at the National Office of Mineral Resources in Cuba in an interview. "We have absolutely no limitations on working with American oil companies. The barriers, unfortunately, come from the other side."
Oil production in Cuba has surged since an opening to foreign investment in the 1990's, with operations by two Canadian companies, the Sherritt International Corporation and Pebercan Inc., helping to increase output to about 70,000 barrels a day in 2005, from a low of 18,000 barrels a day in 1992. Cuba consumes more than 150,000 barrels a day, with Venezuela providing imports on favorable financial terms.
The American economic embargo on dealings with Cuba prohibits energy companies from reaching exploration deals with Unión Cubapetróleo, Cuba's national oil company. But executives who attended the conference said they were encouraged by the recent relaxation of restrictions on American food exports to Cuba and the implications of Chinese rigs searching for oil this year in Cuban waters off the Straits of Florida.
"It's a difficult road ahead, but we're in the same neighborhood," said Amado Durón, director of operations at Valero Energy, the San Antonio-based refining company that could profit from processing Cuban oil at its refineries in Texas, Louisiana or the Caribbean island of Aruba. "The trend is to reach deals."
Cuba has been busy reaching exploration deals in the last year with Sinopec, the energy concern controlled by the Chinese government, ONGC Videsh of India and Norsk Hydro of Norway. So far, however, none of the ventures have found large fields like those in the American waters of the Gulf of Mexico.
Repsol of Spain spent $20 million on drilling that came tantalizingly close to a commercial discovery, but executives said oil from the field only partly met expectations. Petrobras of Brazil shelved Cuban exploration efforts after hitting a dry hole in 2001. Still, elevated oil prices have brought frontier plays like Cuba into play.
Cuba needs the investment. Although its economy has turned a corner with growth of 11.8 percent in 2005, it is hindered by electricity shortages. Most of the oil Cuba produces is laden with sulfur and when used in power plants, "the Cubans are destroying their own infrastructure," said Jorge Piñón Cervera, a consultant in Miami who closely follows Cuba's energy industry.
Given its reserves base, Cuba has the potential to produce 700,000 barrels of oil a day by 2015, according to a study by A. F. Alhajji, an associate professor of economics at Ohio Northern University. That is about twice the production of Equatorial Guinea, one of West Africa's largest oil exporters. Venezuela is already betting on increased activity in Cuba's oil industry, with a $100 million plan to upgrade the Soviet-era Cienfuegos refinery in Cuba.
American oil companies, of course, started Cuba's oil industry, with the corporate ancestor of Exxon, the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey, once controlling the nation's first refinery in Belot across the bay from Havana. Manuel Marrero Faz, senior petroleum adviser to Cuba's ministry of basic industry, said it made sense for Americans to return.
"You need the oil," Mr. Marrero told the Americans. "We can do this on a basis of mutual respect."
Cuba, U.S. Energy Meeting Changes Venues
Julie Watson - Associated Press
Mexico City - A meeting between Cuban officials and U.S. energy executives was moved to another hotel after the Sheraton Hotel in Mexico City, under pressure from the U.S. government, asked the Cubans to leave, the event's organizer said Saturday.
Kirby Jones, president of the U.S.-Cuba Trade Association, said the U.S. government called Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc., and pressured the chain to ask the Cubans to leave, arguing that the U.S. company was violating a 45-year-old U.S. trade embargo against Cuba.
Jones organized the three-day meeting, which opened Thursday. Valero Energy Corp., the United States' biggest oil refiner, the Louisiana Department of Economic Development and the Texas Port of Corpus Christi took part.
Judith Bryan, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City, could not confirm that the U.S. government pressured Starwood.
But she did say that "U.S. law prohibits U.S. persons and entities from providing services to Cuban national persons or entities, and the Sheraton, as a subsidiary of a U.S company, is bound by U.S. law."
Sheraton Hotel officials in Mexico City declined to comment.
The meeting was the first private-sector oil summit between the two countries. It resumed Saturday at the Colon Mission Reforma Hotel.
Raul Perez, who led the 16-member Cuban delegation sent to the meeting, said they were asked to leave the Sheraton without a refund.
"We haven't done anything to violate U.S. laws," he said.
The Mexican government declined to comment on the incident.
During the meeting Friday, Cuban officials urged U.S. corporations to lobby against the U.S. trade embargo and invest in the communist nation's energy sector.
They also announced plans to double their drilling capacity and explore for oil in the waters off the Caribbean island.
In the two years since oil deposits were found off its coast, Cuba has inked exploration deals with Canadian, Chinese, Indian and Norwegian firms.
But U.S. corporations, their hands tied by the embargo, have been forced to watch the flurry of activity taking place less than 60 miles off the coast of Florida. |
| |
|
Vallarta Weddings
Tell a Friend
Site Map
Print this Page
Email Us