HAVANA, (Reuters) – Spanish oil company Repsol said yesterday that the first well in an oil exploration project in Cuban waters has come up dry, delivering bad news to the communist island striving for economic strength and energy independence.
At least two more wells are expected to be drilled by other companies. Cuba hopes to wean itself off Venezuelan oil and become an oil exporter.
“”I can confirm that the Repsol well in Cuba has been reported to be unsuccessful and that we are proceeding to plug and abandon the well,” a Repsol spokesman in Madrid told Reuters.
Repsol operated the well in a consortium with Norway’s Statoil and a unit of India’s ONGC, drilling 4,500 meters into the sea bed a mile deep in the Gulf of Mexico.
“”It’s a bust. It doesn’t mean there’s not oil out there (in Cuba’s offshore), but it looks like they missed the reservoir,” one industry expert said of the well about 20 miles (32 km) off Cuba’s northern coast.
Repsol began drilling at the end of January after the Scarabeo 9, a massive Chinese-built drilling rig owned by Italy’s Saipem, arrived at the island after traveling half way around the world from Singapore.
When Repsol finishes plugging the well in the next few days, the rig will be handed over to Malaysia’s state-owned Petronas, which in partnership with Russia’s Gazprom Neft will sink a second well about 100 miles (160 km) west of the current drill site.
Venezuela’s PDVSA is tentatively scheduled to get the rig for a third well in the island’s waters.
Repsol drilled the only previous Cuba offshore well in 2004 and said that it had found oil but it was not “commercial.
It said it was “evaluating other well prospects in Cuba to decide whether it will drill again.
