Politics blocking joint oil spill response plan
BY ROBERT SILK Free Press Staff
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Wednesday, September 28, 2011
By the end of this year, the Spanish oil company Repsol is expected to begin drilling Cuba's first exploratory oil well just 60 miles southwest of the Dry Tortugas.
It is the first of five sites that Cuba, with the assistance of state and private oil companies from Malaysia, India, Russia, Norway and elsewhere, plan to test in the coming year in hopes of accessing what the U.S. Geological Survey estimates could be as much as 4.5 billion barrels of oil in Cuba's northern waters.
But despite the imminence of the drilling endeavors, and the proximity of the sites to the Gulf of Mexico, the Florida Straits, the Florida Keys and the rest of South Florida, politics are standing in the way of cooperative emergency preparations between the United States and Cuban governments.

Instead, U.S. agencies, including the Coast Guard, the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary and South Florida's national parks, are refreshing plans to protect local waters and shorelines from a potential spill. But those plans could do nothing about stopping a leak at its source in Cuban waters.
"Common sense says they're our neighbor. We don't necessarily get along with them, but it is profoundly in our interest to protect shores, fisheries," said Dan Whittle, who runs the Cuba program for the Environmental Defense Fund and who was part of a delegation that went to Cuba this month to research the steps the island nation is taking to guard against an oil spill.
The final report of the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill, issued in January, called for negotiations between the United States and Cuba, perhaps brokered by Mexico, on regulatory oversight as well as containment and response strategies in the case of a spill.
"It is in our country's national interest to negotiate now with these near neighbors," the report says.
The U.S. and Mexico already have such an agreement in place, which establishes a coordination team, allows for airplanes to cross borders and calls for twice-a-year joint response training exercises, among other things. Despite that precedent, however, the Keys congressional delegates -- Republican U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Republican U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio and Democratic U.S, Sen. Bill Nelson, have advocated less sweeping ways of protecting South Florida against a Cuban oil spill.
Nelson has introduced a bill, currently pending in the Senate Energy Committee, that would block companies whose Cuban operations do not comply with U.S. safety and environmental standards from getting oil and gas leases in areas of the Gulf of Mexico controlled by the United States. The bill would also require the Department of the Interior to prepare spill prevention and clean-up plans.
"Whether the U.S. government should talk to Cuba isn't the central issue," Nelson spokesman Dan McLaughlin wrote in an e-mail to the Free Press last week. "The U.S. doesn't have diplomatic relations with Cuba, just like it doesn't with Iran or Sudan."
Under existing U.S. law, companies can apply for emergency licenses to deploy equipment and personnel to Cuba in response to an oil spill. A Fort Lauderdale company called Cleaned Caribbean Cooperative has such a license, but other vendors have yet to pursue the license.
"Another question that could be asked is: why haven't more companies, like all those that worked on the BP clean-up, even applied?" McLaughlin wrote.
Rubio has been relatively quiet on the Cuba drilling issue and his office did not respond to Free Press phone calls for this story. But according to the website Fuel Fix, which covers the energy sector, in a July Senate hearing Florida's junior senator said that the U.S. should push for tough regulatory standards by using whatever leverage it can over companies, like Repsol, that plan to drill in Cuba.
Ros-Lehtinen, a Cuban-American who has made opposition to the Castro regime a cornerstone of her two decades in Congress, flatly opposes any talks or cooperation with Cuba relating to an oil spill response.
Earlier this month, she lashed out at the U.S. delegation that went to Cuba to research the country' oil drilling preparations.
"The U.S. should make it clear that we oppose any and all dealings which would help Cuba become the oil tycoons of the Caribbean," Ros-Lehtinen said in a prepared statement.
She has proposed her own legislation, which would penalize companies that invest more than $1 million in Cuba's petroleum sector and would deny visas to the individuals who control those companies.
In a statement to the Free Press this week, Ros-Lehtinen's office stopped short of advocating any measures that would allow for U.S. assistance to halt a Cuban oil spill, though the statement did acknowledge the licensing procedure that is already in place.
"The surest way to protect Florida's coast and other U.S. waters from an oil spill disaster originating in Cuba is not to drill off Cuba's coast," said the statement issued by Ros-Lehtinen spokesman Alex Cruz. "However, should a disaster occur and Florida's waters be threatened, U.S. regulations could allow U.S. oil spill mitigation companies to engage in clean-up activities."
In an interview last week, Monroe County Mayor Heather Carruthers said she understands the congresswoman's strident opposition to the Castro regime.
"But I don't think over time it helps. Certainly in this situation we need to be in the loop regarding whether there is a spill and what the response will be," she said.
Fundamentally, said Jorge Pinon, an oil industry expert who has studied Cuba's Gulf of Mexico plans extensively, simply allowing a way for American companies to assist with a spill is not enough.
In the event of a leak, the response will require equipment, personnel, aircraft, naval vessels, "you name it," Pinon said. And even if American companies could make whatever they have available as result of waivers granted by the U.S., it wouldn't matter much without a coordinated U.S.-Cuban response plan.
"If you don't have a battle plan, if you don't have leadership, if you don't have a command structure, all of that is totally worthless," said Pinon, who is also a visiting research fellow at Florida International University.
Pinon, who has spoken with officials from the Cuban energy and environmental ministries, as well with officials from Cuban national oil company Cupet, said he is confident that they are taking safety issues very seriously.
"The Cubans are literally copying every new regulation that the U.S. Department of the Interior is coming out with and every single suggestion that the BP Commission came out with," he said.
But the country lacks the resources to enforce those regulations, he said.
Whittle said that the U.S. has worked with Cuba though the years on issues of mutual importance, such as drug trafficking and hurricanes.
With the first test well in Cuban waters about to be drilled, a joint oil spill response plan should be the newest item on that list.
"We have nothing to lose and everything to gain," he said.
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it