Plans in Cuba and neighboring\u00a0 Bahamas to develop offshore oil fields may open big new oil\u00a0 frontiers at the doorstep of the United States, but the Cuban\u00a0 project has sparked opposition in next-door Florida reflecting\u00a0 the usual antagonistic U.S.-Cuba politics.<\/p>\n
Some Florida political leaders have asked U.S. President\u00a0 Barack Obama to find a way to stop Cuba\u2019s drilling, but so far\u00a0 the White House has stayed out of the issue. Cuban oil\u00a0 exploration plans continue on the communist-led island, where\u00a0 significant fresh drilling is expected to begin early in 2011.<\/p>\n
Maritime boundaries with Cuba and Bahamas are about 50\u00a0 miles (80 km) distance from South Florida, meaning they can\u00a0 drill closer to the state than U.S. operators. In the Bahamas, the Bahamas Petroleum Corp has leased more\u00a0 than 2 million acres offshore and has a joint venture in place\u00a0 with Norway\u2019s Statoil, but this project so far has received\u00a0 little mention in Florida.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It wasn’t concern for the environment when the government told the Bahamian people that there would be no oil exploration in the waters of the Bahamas. The reason was because they already had enough drilling deals set up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"facebook_10223285771444175_51037792744":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[84,76,79],"class_list":["post-2847","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-world","tag-cuba","tag-environment-2","tag-marine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2847","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2847"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2847\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2847"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2847"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2847"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}