By Gary Marx Tribune foreign correspondent

Eighteen miles off Cuba's northern coast, a Spanish company is in the early stages of oil exploration that could dramatically improve Cuba's economic fortunes and increase pressure to ease U.S. trade sanctions against the island.

Battered by high oil prices and starved of hard currency, the Cuban economy has been on life support for years as it struggles to meet its energy needs and manage the Bush administration's intensified efforts to isolate the island's communist government.

But experts say a major oil discovery could provide a huge lift to Cuba by making it energy self-sufficient and even a potential oil exporter.


Neither Cuba nor Repsol YPF, the petrochemical giant conducting the exploration, have said much about the project since drilling began in June. Preliminary results could be announced as early as next week.


"These are high-risk areas, but we are optimistic," Alfonso Cortina, Repsol's chief executive, said in March. The company is spending $195,000 a day to lease a Norwegian platform that is prospecting a mile below the water's surface.


While the Gulf of Mexico has been a major source of crude oil for decades, experts said it is impossible to predict whether Repsol will come up dry or discover enough high-quality light crude to justify investing the $1 billion-plus needed to develop a major field.


Repsol's strip in the gulf never has been drilled before. Previous offshore exploration efforts near Cuba have turned up little, though the technology for finding deep-water oil deposits has advanced significantly in recent years.


Production takes years

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor y&cid=2027&ncid=2027&e=6&u=/chitribts/20040729/ts_chicagotrib/cubahopesoffshoreoilwillfueleconomyeaseisolation

<font color="#000002" size="1">[ July 29, 2004 01:02 PM: Message edited by: travelinman ]</font>