It may be a mordant chuckle, but it's a chuckle nonetheless.

posted by The Vidiot @ 11:42 AM Permalink

Cuba is sitting on some oil. Maybe a lot of oil. And guess who's stomping their feet and holding their breath?

Sometime later this year, less than 70 miles from Florida, a consortium of Spanish, Indian and Norwegian companies will likely start drilling for oil. It could mark the beginning of a Cuban oil rush - one that American oil companies won't be able to join, despite their proximity to the action.

And that has some U.S. oil industry executives and lobbyists seething, especially since the American Association of Petroleum Geologists calls the offshore Cuban oil deposits a "significant find."

U.S. oil companies can't play in these waters, of course, barred as they are by sanctions prohibiting them from doing business with Cuba. But irked at the irony of sanctions designed to isolate Fidel Castro that isolate them instead, some in the oil industry are seeking to exempt U.S. oil companies from the 45-year-old embargo.

Well, well, well. Big Oil can't play in Cuban water. Too bad for them.

As far as I'm concerned, they had better not be exempt from the embargo before my husband and his family can visit their family in Cuba without having to apply for a visa.

Of all the stupid US foreign policies that are out there, and there a plenty of them, that embargo has to be one of the dumbest. Isolating Castro only made him stronger. Fools.

Labels: big oil, cuba