Cubans employ oil diplomacy

MEXICO CITY — Cuban officials invited U.S. corporations Friday to lobby against the U.S. trade embargo and invest in the communist nation’s energy sector, as they announced plans to double their drilling capacity and explore for oil in the island’s Caribbean waters.

In the first private-sector oil summit between the two countries, executives from U.S. giants like ExxonMobil Corp., Caterpillar Inc. and Valero Energy Corp. were meeting with Cuban government officials in Mexico City this week to learn about Cuba’s potentially lucrative oil reserves.

“We would be happy if North American companies also participated in future projects,” said Raul Perez de Prado, Cuba’s vice minister of basic industry.

U.S. executives should work to “eliminate the absurd barriers” that limit investment, Perez de Prado said, referring to the 45-year-old U.S. trade embargo designed to undermine Fidel Castro’s communist government.

In the two years since petroleum deposits were found off its coast, Cuba has inked exploration deals with Canadian, Chinese, Indian and Norwegian firms.

But U.S. corporations, their hands tied by the embargo, have been forced to watch the flurry of activity taking place less than 60 miles off the coast of Florida.

This week’s gathering could be “a watershed moment” that ushers in a change in U.S. policy, said Jonathan Benjamin-Alvarado, a political scientist at the University of Nebraska, Omaha, who studies the Cuban energy sector.

One year after Cuban and U.S. agricultural officials held similar meetings in Mexico in 1999, the U.S. government passed a law allowing food and agricultural exports to Cuba on a cash basis. Cuba says it has since purchased $1.5 billion in American food.

Judith Bryan, spokeswoman for the U.S. embassy in Mexico City, however, said the United States is studying tightening its embargo against Cuba even more.

“There’s nothing illegal about a meeting here in Mexico,” she said. “But we would like to remind participants that the U.S. government is not only continuing the existing sanctions but is studying the strengthening of the sanctions.”