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A BRITISH oil company believes Cuba has in the region of a billion barrels oil reserves and is determined to go ahead and exploit them regardless of the US blockade.
According to a report in the The Sunday Independent of Aug 24 the small British company, Premier Oil doesn't believe the US can stop it from operating on the island.
It is not deterred by the so-called Helms-Burton law because it claims the potential oil fields it is exploring are not assets formerly owned by American citizens.
"We are on very solid legal ground," said Richard Haythornthwaite, board director with Premier, in charge of exploration.
Premier is one of a handful of oil companies including Canada's Sherritt International who are prospecting for oil in Cuba, a move that if successful, says The Independent report, would solve Cuba's economic problems, embarrass to the US, and stoke tensions with the European Union.
Premier puts the odds of success at about 20 to 1, saying it has identified underground rock structures that might contain between 500 million and a billion barrels of oil - a world- class find.
"It is massive," The Independent quotes Mr Haythornthwaite. "If this comes in, Premier would be a fundamentally different company and Cuba would be a fundamentally different country."
Presently, Cuba produces about 30,000 barrels of oil a day, about 10 per cent of what its own refineries consume but it also needs the hard currency that can be generated by oil sales because the US blocks so many avenues to raising cash through other means.