Find oil in the Gulf of Mexico

Russia and Cuba got down to business

The new stage in Russian-Cuban cooperation announced by Moscow is beginning to take on certain features. Yesterday in Havana the signing of the first three documents on interaction between the Russian company Zarubezhneft and the Cuban oil company Kupet took place. The agreements provide for the introduction in Cuba of modern technologies and methods for increasing oil production, the supply of technical equipment for the industry and the carrying out of geological exploration work to search for new oil fields on land and on the Cuban shelf of the Gulf of Mexico. In this last area, a joint venture is envisaged.

On the Russian side, the negotiations were attended by a group of specialists led by the General Director of Zarubezhneft OJSC Nikolai Brunich, and on the Cuban side by the Minister of Basic Industry (this department is responsible for natural resources) Yadira Garcia Vera and experts from her department. The Russian Ambassador to Cuba Mikhail Kamynin and other diplomats who provided organizational support to the work of the Russian delegation took part in the negotiations before the signing of the documents.

Representatives of the state company Zarubezhneft told a Vremya Novostey correspondent that they offered Cubans assistance in training specialists for the oil industry in Russian educational institutions with scholarships. In Moscow, the signed documents must be approved by the board of directors of the Zarubezhneft company, with which, according to our interlocutors, there should be no problems.

A start has been made in concrete cooperation between Moscow and Havana. And the basis for the development of a new stage in our relations with Cuba was laid by the provision of a Russian loan to the island of $355 million in September 2006 , after which 45 contracts worth $140.1 million were signed between the countries, almost half of which were financed against this loan. However, real deliveries began only in the spring of this year under five contracts - for $45 million. They included 200 “long” articulated LiAZ buses, 203 KamAZ trucks, 86 elevators, 106 light-duty vehicles, tires and tubes. Not long ago, Russia sold six Il-96 and Tu-204 passenger and cargo airliners to Cuba on a credit basis, after which Havana ordered over a dozen more civilian airliners from Russian companies.

It is not surprising that the eighth meeting of the Russian-Cuban intergovernmental commission on trade, economic, scientific and technical cooperation, held in April this year in Havana, became the most successful in the post-Soviet years. This was followed by visits to Cuba by respectable Russian delegations, including in September led by Deputy Prime Minister and head of the Russian part of the intergovernmental commission Igor Sechin (pictured) .

Then Cuban leader Raul Castro began by expressing to Igor Sechin words of gratitude to the Russians for their prompt humanitarian assistance. About 120 tons of tents, blankets and construction materials were delivered to the island by four Emergencies Ministry planes immediately after a devastating hurricane hit Cuba in the first days of September. The disaster caused $5 billion in damage to the country, damaging half a million residential buildings. The Russians were among the first to help the Cubans.

Alexander AKSENOV, Havana