Will Cuba's offshore oil discovery finally break the US trade embargo?

[jpak]

http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/news/html/20060728T200000-0500_110018_OBS_WILL_CUBA_S_OFFSHORE_OIL_DISCOVERY_FINALLY_BREAK_THE_US_TRADE_EMBARGO_.asp

MIAMI, USA (AP) - America's trade embargo with Cuba has been in place since 1961, and although it has yet to loosen Fidel Castro's grip on power, it has cost the United States little strategically or economically. Until now, that is.

From here on out, say a growing chorus of experts, America will pay a price for maintaining its 45-year trade ban with the communist nation - a strategic and economic price that will have negative repercussions for the United States in the decades to come. What has changed the equation? Oil.

To be more specific, recent, sizable discoveries of it in the North Cuba Basin - deep-water fields that have already drawn the interest of companies from China, India, Norway, Spain, Canada, Venezuela and Brazil.

This, in turn, has reheated debate in the US Congress and the Cuban-American community on an old question: Has the time finally come to shelve the embargo - given America's need for more sources of crude at a time of rising gas prices, soaring global demand and the outbreak of war in the Middle East?

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[The Velveteen Ocelot]

1. Embargo? We don't need no stinking embargo. We can just invade them

like we do everybody else who has a lot of oil.

[whistle]

2. Makes for another hostile country for BushCo to invade and loot

[Jackpine Radical]

3. How naive.

First, we are already embroiled in a war that is serving to keep Iraq's oil off the world market for some years while oilco profits soar. And second, when we decide we want that Cuban oil we'll just suddeenly discover Fidel (or his heir) is harboring terrorists, thereby justifying a pre-emptive move to invade them and take it.