HAVANA (Reuters) – Russia and Cuba have signed contracts that “set the bases” for Russian oil company Zarubezhneft to search for oil in Cuba’s part of the Gulf of Mexico, Cuba’s state-run press said on Wednesday.
In its online edition, Communist Party newspaper Granma said four oil-related contracts had been signed during a visit on Tuesday by Russian Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin to the island that was his country’s close ally during the Cold War.
Granma, without providing details, said the oil pacts between Zarubezhneft and state-owned Cuba Petroleo “set the bases for work in (Cuba’s) exclusive economic zone in the gulf.”
Cuba said earlier this year that Russian companies had been given their pick of 15 blocs to lease in the Gulf of Mexico, but there was no mention of a lease signing in Granma or other news reports on Wednesday.
Russian news agency RIA-Novosti quoted Sechin as saying “we consider that an outcome of this cooperation will be new opportunities both for Cuba as well as Zarubezhneft.”
Cuba has said it may have 20 billion barrels of oil reserves in its offshore fields, but only one test well has been drilled.
That well, completed in 2004 off Cuba’s northern coast near Havana, showed traces of oil, according to the operator, Spain’s Repsol-YPF, but the company has not yet drilled a long-promised second well.
