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From: John Clancy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Wed, 17 Jan 2001 14:45:45 -0800
© Copyright. 1996-2001. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. GRANMA INTERNATIONAL/
ONLINE EDITION January 16, 2001
NEW TECHNOLOGY INCREASES OIL YIELDS
Investment of $600 million USD boosts domestic production sixfold
* Excellent opportunities for foreign investment, and 20 existing
contracts * Possibility of huge deposits in the Cuban sector of the
Gulf of Mexico is particularly significant
BY JOAQUIN ORAMAS
WITH 20 risk exploration contracts in operation, joint ventures with
foreign capital, the introduction of cutting-edge technology, the
utilization of accompanying gas and investment totaling $600 million
USD over a 10-year period, Cuba has recorded a sixfold increase in
its oil industry as compared to 1960.
In 1999, the production of crude rose to 2.7 billion tons and the
utilization of the accompanying gas reached a volume of 500 million
cubic meters. Translated into economic terms, the result is
equivalent to over three million tons' worth of energy, representing
import savings of $410 million USD.
Outstanding in the period reviewed is the utilization of modern
methods for increased production including the adoption of cutting-
edge technology. Hence aspects such as horizontal perforation and the
installation of more efficient pumps in the wells. This has resulted
in a four- to fivefold reduction of perforation points and the
possibility of up to six times the volume of oil yielded.
Improvements to the pumping system, with an increased productivity of
3% in some cases, also contributed and production levels increased by
five or six times in relation to conventional wells.
Other works executed included the construction of pipelines for the
transportation of both oil and gas, thus reducing costs and giving
greater security to such operations. There were time and energy
savings with the starting up of crude oil processing plants capable
of reducing the fuel's water content and a percentage of the salts,
as well as eliminating the sulphahydric acid.
In the context of utilizing accompanying gas for electricity
generation the execution of the third phase of the investment process
at the Energás plant in Varadero, north Matanzas province, was an
important advance.
Energás is a Cuban-Canadian joint venture and the works, due for
completion this year, consist of installing the so-called combined
cycle, which will convert the installation into the most efficient in
Cuba from the energy point of view, and double its current capacity
of 105 megawatts.
In parallel, this process eliminates environmental contamination in
the country's principal tourist complex, and produced the equivalent
of 500,000 tons of imported fuel oil in 2000.
IMPORTANT DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM
The results being recorded by the Cuban oil industry are the fruits
of efforts directed by Comandante Che Guevara, when he was minister
of industries and perceived the need to develop that sector which, in
1959, merely contributed 50,000 tons of oil and had a minimal
infrastructure.
Today, geological and geophysical knowledge of the oil-bearing
provinces and the results of oint labors with foreign companies
involved in risk prospecting have facilitated a more ambitious
program than previous ones. The plan for Cuban oil industry targets
projects a gradual increase of equivalent energy (crude plus gas) of
four million tons this year, 4.7 million tons in 2002, five million
tons in 2003, 5.5 million tons in 2004, rising to six million tons in
2005. Within this five-year period, the effect in terms of
substituting for fuel imports could reach approximately $US3 billion.
This is no easy task given the need for cutting-edge machinery and
capital injection to confront the island's geological complexities.
However, as Michael J. Perkins, vice president of the international
prospect section of Canadian company Genoil Inc. notes, Cuban
specialists have an important role in helping to find the best
sources and most appropriate places for drilling. Many
representatives of foreign firms have commented on the high technical
qualifications of Cuban workers and experts and see that as an
advantage in terms of joint development on the island.
WIDE-RANGING POSSIBILITIES FOR FOREIGN INVESTMENT
Foreign participation in oil production developments is improving as
information on the favorable conditions for hydrocarbon deposits
becomes known. These lie principally in the northern provinces, the
most studied and with the finest prospects, in a 1000-kilometer
extension with 8-12 kilometers of sediment and 80% of the areas with
underwater prospects.
The 20 prospect contracts include some blocks in the south of the
island, where favorable prospects for the existence of hydrocarbons
extend from the eastern province of Guantánamo to the Guahanacabibes
peninsula in the far west of the island. Cubapetróleo, the island's
principal oil enterprise, has 28 blocks available for prospecting, 16
onshore and the rest offshore.
Last November, the Brazilian Petrobras company initiated prospecting
activities over 3000 square kilometers in the maritime area north of
Ciego de Avila province.
The Cuban proposal for a new contract model of shared prospecting and
the exploration of sea deposits in the country's exclusive section
of the Gulf of Mexico has aroused particular interest. This
corresponds to a maritime extension of 112,000 square kilometers
which has been divided into 59 blocks. Spain's Repsol YPF company and
Cubapetróleo recently signed an agreement to study various potential
cooperative projects in the field of hydrocarbon exploration and
production, refining, supplies, transportation, the storing and
marketing of oil products and liquid gas, as well developing natural
gas in Cuba and in other markets. - They have likewise signed a
participation contract for deepwater hydrocarbon exploration in
the Cuban section of the Gulf of Mexico.
Additional cooperative projects at the planning stage cover
alternatives for the restoration and upgrading of the Cienfuegos
refinery, fortifying bilateral commercial activities, and exploring
possibilities for utilizing natural gas in electricity generation.
The signatories have until May 31 to finalize details for those
projects and draft the legal terms for their materialization.
The Cuban sector in the Gulf of Mexico lies within the proliferous
oil basin and agreements signed with Mexico and the United States
legally define maritime border limits. The legal framework likewise
conforms with international agreements related to maritime rights
and law.
The advantages of new prospecting opportunities in the Gulf of Mexico
are backed by a proven oil system confirming the possibility of large
or even huge yields. At the same time, current technology is able to
access the depths of the marine floor, while an additional bonus is
the fact that the Cuban section of the Gulf is in proximity to mature
oil areas.
The Cuban government is giving its total support to the new
prospecting developments and the attractive contractual conditions
offered by Cubapetróleo, the island national oil company.
*********
January 16, 2001
Another fatal fruit of U.S. migratory policy
* Two youths die attempting to emigrate in aircraft undercarriage
compartment
BY LILLIAM RIERA (Granma International staff writer)
THE death of two Cuban teenagers attempting to travel-supposedly to
the United States-in the undercarriage of a British Airways Boeing
777, which they climbed into at Havana's José Martí International
Airport, is inscribed as yet another terrible consequence of the U.S.
emigration policy, which stimulates illegal exits from the island.
Alberto Esteban Vázquez and Maikel Fonseca Almira, aged just 16 and
17, respectively, pupils at the Camilo Cienfuegos Military College in
the capital municipality of Guanabacoa, both without any history of
wishing to emigrate, were the victims of this distressing incident
on December 24 last year.
The incident, which sent two families into mourning and stirred the
emotions of the entire Cuban population, was fully analyzed on two
televised roundtables on January 11 and 12, where detailed
information was given on the exhaustive investigation headed by the
military counterintelligence services and the Counterintelligence
Office of the Cuban Ministry of the Interior in order to reconstruct
and clarify what happened.
In the presence of President Fidel Castro on January 12, panelists
reflected on the criminal nature of the Cuban Adjustment Act-in place
since 1966-which violates the 1994 and 1995 migratory agreements
between Cuba and the United States and encourages illegal exoduses
from the island plus the trafficking of persons by establishing that
Cubans who manage to reach U.S. territory-by whatever means-can be
admitted into that country. If this stimulus did not exist, no young
person would think of leaving the country in such a fantastic and
suicidal way.
Due to their value as important testimonies in clarifying exactly
what happened, a full reading was given to transcripts of conver-
sations conducted by Fidel, first with Colonel Juan Tomás Díaz,
father of Yassel Díaz Vázquez-a fellow student of the dead youths-and
then with Yassel himself, who did not take part in what happened as
he thought comments on the whole crazy adventure were a joke.
The dialogue with Yassel, in particular, revealed how Alberto's
conduct changed and the idea of traveling came up after he spent time
with his maternal grandfather from Miami, Juan A. Rodríguez, in the
eastern city of Santiago de Cuba, when he was loaded with presents
and went to fiestas and on excursions.
As it emerged through interviews with members of the family,
Rodríguez arrived in the Cuban capital on December 2, with his
current wife and the teenager's maternal great-grandmother, and
traveled on to Santiago de Cuba to meet up with other relatives.
Alberto joined them on December 7, after his maternal grandmother-
claiming the alleged terminal illness of a great-grandfather-asked
the college to grant her grandson a few days' leave.
In his statements, Yassel affirmed that it was precisely on his
return from Santiago de Cuba that Alberto told Maikel and himself
that he had had a good time with the family, and about the promises
that his grandfather had made to reclaim the whole family, and the
housing and work opportunities in the United States. Then came the
idea of leaving the country "in the wheel of a plane." He alluded to
a person from the United States that he met in Santiago de Cuba and
who had left the country in that way.
Previously, in conversation with Yassel's father, Fidel noted that
the grandfather's promises and his contacts in Santiago gave the boy
(Alberto) the idea that he brought back to the college. What he
couldn't believe was that someone, not even the grandfather, could
have said that it was possible to go in such a way. And he went on to
note: "It seems to me that someone must have talked to him...Someone
gave him confidence and security in what he did."
According to what Yassel told those investigating, Alberto's plan was
to leave on Saturday, December 23 at 5:00 p.m. for the airport, find
out which flights were leaving so as to pick the ideal one, head for
the fencing nearest to the end of the runway and, if the conditions
were right, to leave that same day.
It is known that the captain of the British Airways flight, which
took off at 0:45 a.m. on December 24-the time that two intruders were
detected on the runway-noted in his flight report that a British
passenger had informed the purser of two individuals he had seen run
under the aircraft as it was preparing to take off in Havana.
It has been stated that Alberto and Maikel got into the aircraft's
front right undercarriage when it was stationary for 2:59 seconds at
the head of the runway, when one of the two security cars
accompanying it was located at the back left, and the other a few
meters in front, also on the left.
The January 11 roundtable also noted that the Cuban authorities asked
to inspect the undercarriage of a similar plane to establish the
conditions in which the two teenagers supposedly traveled. And, to
their surprise, it was confirmed that the aircraft on Cuban soil
at that time was precisely the one of the fateful journey, on which
they found marks left by the two youths' shoes.
Results were detailed of the British authorities' investigations,
including evidence of finding the corpses, photo albums showing their
clothing, the lifting of the bodies, the autopsies and plans of the
aircraft with the footprints left when they climbed into the main
undercarriage.
An AFP cable datelined December 28 noted, among other things, that
both individuals hid in the non-pressurized compartment of the Boeing
777's front wheel, where they were exposed to intense cold and lack
of oxygen.
In that context, Cuban aeronautic expert witnesses Jorge Perpinan and
Manuel Vega described the terrible conditions to which anybody
traveling in these conditions is exposed to: a sensible reduction of
pressure and oxygen and freezing due to altitude, with temperatures
of some 50 degrees below zero. The experts confirmed that nobody
could have survived such an adventure.
Investigations have revealed that this was not a case of desperate
persons fleeing the country, but of immature teenagers, incited by
the siren songs of an alleged easy life, who were unaware of the risk
that they were running and to which they were exposing the airliner
and its passengers.
*********
© Copyright. 1996-2001. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. GRANMA INTERNATIONAL/
ONLINE EDITION - January 10, 2001
Financial oracles' erroneous predictions
BY RAISA PAGES (Granma International staff writer)
WHILE Henry Ford symbolized capitalism's productive and industrial
age, in the most recent decades the paradigmatic person has been
multi-millionaire financier George Soros, a Hungarian living in the
United States.
The speculative economy decides and dictates decisions above and at
the expense of the real economy. The financial bubble is growing and
at the same time diminishing the amount of capital available for
productive investments, a trend that endangers the reproduction of
the capitalist system which cannot metabolize this tendency.
It is like drinking a tonic whose secondary effects are poisonous
to the organism.
The financial markets manage 70times more money than the real economy
and there are no controls over their movements. The proportion of
foreign exchange investment related to real goods and services has
fallen from 80% in 1975 to just 2% at the current time. The
remaining 98% of the $1.5 trillion USD that moves on stock markets
each day is related to speculation on currency rates of exchange.
The Center for Research on the World Economy (CIEM) warned in Havana
of the chasm that exists between unbridled speculation and the
ridiculously poor level of security and protection against that
phenomenon.
International monetary reserves, individual countries' defense
mechanisms against sudden movements in rates, are ever more insecure
now that exchange rates have become the hunting ground of private
speculators.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank have
demonstrated their inability to prevent the crises that exploded in
the final years of the 20th century, but continue to send
encouraging messages and overlooking the antecedents of these
episodes in the 1980s.
National Assembly Deputy Osvaldo Martínez, who leads the CIEM,
referred to the brief New York stock market crash in 1987, which
analysts were at a loss to explain.
There were other antecedents of the crisis in the 1990s, linked to
the end of very high growth levels in the Japanese economy during
1988-89, followed by an almost zero rate of increase in this
indicator during subsequent years. But this derailing of the Japanese
economic machine was overshadowed by a period of prosperity in the
U.S. economy.
Another related chaotic moment was the collapse of the Mexican
economy in December 1994 and through 1995. The so-called Tequila
Effect was eventually contained through a large package of financial
aid provided by the United States, worried about the possible
commercial repercussions of its neighbor's financial crisis.
CIEM's experts feel that the Mexican crisis exploded the myth of
neoliberal prosperity in Latin America.
The Southeast Asian tiger model of opening the doors to the First
World was swept away by the subsequent economic crisis that engulfed
those nations in 1997-99.
In Eastern Europe, experiments involving a rapid transition to a
capitalist system received their final blow with the crisis in
Russia.
The financial crises in Asia, Eastern Europe and Latin America
demonstrate that hopes of overcoming underdevelopment by following
the capitalist model have been entirely extinguished.
Last October the IMF announced an encouraging outlook, with
predictions of a 4.3% rate of world economic growth, pushed on by the
U.S. bonanza, an upturn in Europe and the rapid recoveries seen in
Asia and Latin America.
But such predictions do not take into account the explosive dangers.
Proposals for a new financial architecture to avoid future economic
crises have been shelved.
On a world scale, the gross domestic product growth rate was 4.5% in
1970-79 and 2.9% in 1990-99. If the GDP growth rate of the seven most
developed countries, known as the G-7, is taken on its own, a similar
tendency is observed: 5-6% in the 1960s and 2-3% in the 1990s.
Neoliberal policies have boosted megamergers, reflecting the lack of
economic growth on an international scale. The pie is not getting any
bigger andthe battle over the division of its pieces is intensifying.
Some 80% of direct investment made in 1999 was through company
mergers. While in 1990 the value of mergers reached $150 billion USD,
in 1999 this value had multiplied to $720 billion USD.
But for humankind, the most degrading aspect of neoliberalism lies in
a system that encourages overconsumption for 20% of the world's
population while leaving the remainder to suffer from
underconsumption.
The total fortune of the world's 200 super-rich is equivalent to the
annual income of 2.5 billion other people. CIEM experts believe that
neoliberal globalization creates miniature Third Worlds inside the
First World.
Although the IMF and World Bank's optimistic predictions continue,
the declarations made by these financial oracles of today's world are
nothing more than erroneous signals with limited scope.
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