As Congress has debated energy policy over the past several days, an
unusual argument keeps surfacing in sup****t of drilling off the U.S.
coastline and in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
Why, ask some Republicans, should the United States be thwarted from
drilling in its own territory when just 50 miles off the Florida
coastline the Chinese government is drilling for oil under Cuban
leases?
Yet no one can prove that the Chinese are drilling anywhere off Cuba's
shoreline. The China-Cuba connection is "akin to urban legend," said
Sen. Mel Martinez, a Republican from Florida who opposes drilling off
the coast of his state but who backs exploration in ANWR.
"China is not drilling in Cuba's Gulf of Mexico waters, period," said
Jorge Pinon, an energy fellow with the Center for Hemispheric Policy
at the University of Miami and an expert in oil exploration in the
Gulf of Mexico. Martinez cited Pinon's research when he took to the
Senate floor Wednesday to set the record straight.
Even so, the Chinese-drilling-in-Cuba legend has gained momentum and
has been swept up in Republican arguments to open up more U.S.
territory to domestic production.
Vice President Dick Cheney, in a speech Wednesday to the U.S. Chamber
of Commerce, picked up the refrain. Cheney quoted a column by George
Will, who wrote last week that "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."
In his speech, Cheney described the Chinese as being "in cooperation
with the Cuban government. Even the communists have figured out that a
good answer to higher prices means more supply."
"But Congress says no to drilling in ANWR, no to drilling on the East
Coast, no to drilling on the West Coast," Cheney added.
The office of House Minority Leader John Boehner defended the GOP
drilling claims. "A 2006 New York Times story highlights lease
agreements negotiated between Cuba and China and the fact that China
was planning to drill in the Florida Strait off the coast of Cuba,"
said spokesman Michael Steel.
The China-Cuba connection also appeared in an editorial Monday in
Investor's Business Daily, which wrote that "the U.S. Congress has
voted consistently to keep 85 percent of America's offshore oil and
gas off-limits, while China and Cuba drill 60 miles from Key West,
Fla."
And on Tuesday, Rep. George Radanovich, R-Calif., wrote in the Modesto
Bee that "China, thanks to a lease issued by Cuba, is drilling for oil
just 50 miles off Florida's coast."
A spokesman for Radanovich said Wednesday that the congressman had
read about a Cuban lease to Chinese interests in the 2006 Times
article.
China's Sinopec oil company does have an agreement with the Cuban
government, but it's to develop onshore resources west of Havana,
Pinon said. The Chinese have done some seismic testing, he said, but
no drilling, and nothing offshore.
Western diplomats in Havana tell McClatchy that to the best of their
knowledge, there is no Chinese drilling in or around Cuba.
"I've never heard anything about this," said one diplomat from a
country in the hemisphere.
More on this latest Republican lie at McClatchy
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/251/story/40776.html
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