Cuba has huge oil reserves

Published 10:44 pm Saturday, May 16, 2009

WASHINGTON — Deep in the Gulf of Mexico, an end to the 1962 U.S. trade embargo against Cuba may be lying untapped, buried under layers of rock, seawater and bitter relations.

Oil, up to 20 billion barrels of it, sits off Cuba’s northwest coast in territorial waters, the Cuban government says. At a minimum, estimates by the U.S. Geological Survey place Cuba’s potential deep-water reserves at 4.6 billion barrels of oil and 9.8 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, stores that would rank the island among the region’s top producers.

Limited commercial ties between U.S. businesses and the island’s communist government have been quietly expanding this decade as Cuban purchases of U.S. goods — mostly food — have increased from $7 million in 2001 to $718 million in 2008, according to census data.