China, Cuba reported in Gulf oil partnership

[Judi Lynn]

China, Cuba reported in Gulf oil partnership
U.S. firms stand by, prohibited from bidding on contracts; lawmakers propose opening up U.S. coast for drilling.
May 9, 2006: 10:12 AM EDT

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) - Plans for foreign oil companies, some from India and China, to drill off the cost of Cuba are prompting calls from lawmakers to ease environmental restrictions that prohibit coastal drilling in most of the U.S., according to a report Tuesday.

At a time of rising soaring gasoline prices caused partly by a lack of supply, legislators are fuming that Cuba is opening up its continental shelf for oil and gas exploration while most of the U.S. continental shelf outside the Gulf of Mexico, which extends 200 miles from shore, has been off limits for drilling since the early 1980s, the New York Times reported.



Firms from China and India will be
drilling for oil off the coast of Cuba,
but U.S. companies are prohibited
from bidding on the contracts,
according to a recent report.

Adding insult to injury, the Times said U.S. firms were invited to bid on the Cuban contracts, but were barred by the U.S. government due to the country's longstanding economic embargo of communist Cuba.

"Red China should not be left to drill for oil within spitting distance of our shores without competition from U.S. industries," Sen. Larry Craig, Republican of Idaho, told the Times.
(snip/...)

http://money.cnn.com/2006/05/09/news/economy/oil_cuba/index.htm

[lumpy]

1. What next ?

What will be the US response to the China/Cuba proposal? Larry Craigs response is interesting. Does he believe US restrictions on doing business with Cuba should be lifted? Money talks to Corporate interests in this instance.

[Judi Lynn]

2. Craig is very interesting on Cuba. He believes the travel ban

should be lifted. Very unusual for a Republican, although more and more Republicans are starting to move in that direction every year.

Joan Slote, a gold medal cyclist in the Senior Olympics, speaks with Senator Larry Craig (R-ID) about punishment she is facing from the U.S. Treasury Department for traveling to Cuba during a Freedom to Travel Forum on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, Tues., July 15, 2003. Slote is threatened with loss of her Social Security benefits for a trip she took in January 2000. Slote and Craig participated in a day-long conference, sponsored by the Center for International Policy and other organizations, to examine U.S.-Cuba relations as Congress prepares to vote on the U.S. travel ban.

http://www.cubacentral.com/todaysnewsdetail.cfm?ID=54

[lumpy]

3. I wonder why ?

The corporatrists interested in getting their grubby fingers in the pie?

[Judi Lynn]

5. Good question! It started back during Clinton's Presidency.

This may help, although it was written in 1999:

comment | posted January 14, 1999 (February 1, 1999 issue)
Cowardice on Cuba
Peter Kornbluh

"Did you hear? Clinton is beginning to lift the embargo. It's on the news," a fellow traveler to Cuba exclaimed in Havana's José Martí International Airport. The President's January 5 announcement of "additional steps to reach out to the Cuban people"--expanded remittances and flights, a few licenses for the sale of food and agricultural goods and permission for a binational baseball game--has been wildly misconstrued. Diehard-liners are accusing the White House of accommodating Castro, but Clinton remains far closer to their retrograde position than to a realistic policy toward the forty-year-old Cuban Revolution.

To be sure, Clinton's is a unilateral initiative--abandoning the policy of "calibrated response" to changes in Cuba. And it marks the first opening under the rigid trade embargo for corporations like Archer Daniels Midland to sell grain, pesticides and fertilizer to select Cubans, if Castro's government agrees.

Overall, however, the Administration has squandered a pivotal opportunity to break with the implacable hostility of the past. On the President's desk were a Republican-backed proposal to establish a National Bipartisan Commission on Cuba to re-evaluate the cold war relic that is Cuba policy, as well as a new set of creative recommendations by a Council on Foreign Relations Task Force on Cuba. On the altar of electoral politics, the President has sacrificed both.

In taking the low road, Clinton chose to ignore the considerable political space for changing course that has opened up over the past year. The Pope's visit to Havana a year ago, during which he urged Washington to "change, change, change" its hostile posture, provided high-profile moral cover for the United States to fundamentally rethink its position. The Pentagon's unequivocal conclusion in May that Cuba "does not pose a significant military threat to the United States or to other countries in the region" eliminated the national security argument for the embargo. The emergence of Americans for Humanitarian Trade with Cuba, a business group led by well-known titans of commerce and finance, brought a potentially formidable lobby to the debate over Cuba.

Finally, this past fall Senator John Warner delivered key Republican support to the White House for a long-overdue bipartisan reassessment of Cuba policy. "More and more Americans are becoming concerned about the far-reaching effects of our policy on US interests and the Cuban people," Warner and twenty-three other Republican senators wrote the President in October. Their proposal for a commission carried the endorsement of former Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger, George Shultz and Lawrence Eagleburger, among other conservative luminaries.
(snip/...)

http://www.thenation.com/doc/19990201/kornbluh

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Here's a statement by Christopher Dodd, one of the other participants:

For Immediate Release

Senator Christopher J. Dodd
STATEMENT IN SUPPORT OF ESTABLISHING A BIPARTISAN COMMISSION ON CUBA
June 20, 2000

"Mr. President, I send to the desk an amendment and ask for its immediate consideration.

Last Friday I talked at some length about why I believe that the amendment originally proposed by Senator Warner and myself to establish a bipartisan commission to review United States policy toward Cuba is in our national interest.

The amendment I have just offer, like the Warner amendment, would provide for the appointment bipartisan commission to review U.S. policy with respect to Cuba and to make recommendations on how we can bring that policy into the 21st century.

I regret that because Senator Warner is the manager of the underlying bill he has had to withdraw his support for this amendment. I believe that he still thinks that this is a good idea even if he must disagree with the vehicle to which it has been attached.

This commission would be composed of twelve members chosen as follows: six by the President, six by the Congress (four by House and Senate Republican leaders and two by the Democratic leaders.) Senator Warner and I originally crafted this legislation to ensure that the commission would have a balanced and diverse membership. Commissioners are to be selected from various fields of expertise - including human rights, religious, public health, military, business, agricultural, and the Cuban-American community.
(snip/...)

http://dodd.senate.gov/index.php?q=node/3274&pr=press/Speeches/106_00/0620.htm

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

There were some Cuban "exile" entanglements Clinton had with Miami. You may remember he has a Cuban "exile" sister-in-law there. I would imagine he campaigned hard there for campaign funds, too, as do most Presidential candidates any more. They have a whole lot of money to throw around, and they also have a lot of control over Florida politics, which is 23 or 25 electoral votes.

As for the Republican part, I've been cynical in thinking that it could be wealthy Republican land developers, like the ones who built Sun City, in Arizona (where Jeff Flake lives, who brings legislation EVERY YEAR in the House of Representatives to drop the travel ban) are really hot to get down there and start building hotels and retirement communities, like Del Webb has done in Arizona.

You probably also know that _Bush and his friends in Congress have funneled HUGE chunks of change to Florida International University, where they have a program in place with a 400 page plan for running things in Cuba after Fidel Castro has died. Apparently they don't think they need to consult the Cuban people.

They Cuban population already knows it's in their plans to privatize Cuban health care. That intention is not acceptable to Cubans.

[One_Life_To_Give]

4. Lift Florida's ban on drilling

This will bring more pressure for Florida to lift it's ban on coastal drilling.