In fashion this year in Washington are simulation games played by Latin America policymakers and industry leaders, all of whom pretend to react to a Cuba suddenly bereft of the Castro brothers. The Brookings Institution earlier this month staged its fourth such simulation exercise.
Their playbook will change if alleged claims by Cuba's state-owned oil company Cupet of massive offshore oil reserves pan out. In news stories flashed round the world days ago, Cupet's exploration manager was quoted as saying that the island nation's offshore recoverable reserves could hit 20 billion barrels. One Cuba energy academic in the US called the possible find a "game-changer."
The island nation of 11 million depends largely on tourism, remittances from the Cuban emigre diaspora, and subsidy hand-outs from friend Hugo Chavez to get by in the face of sclerotic government economic policies and the sclerotic US trade embargo in place since 1962.
Winks and blinks and less than a handful of brazen small steps under Raul Castro suggest a loosening of deep-seated economic and political policies. Among the most far-reaching -- cutting red tape in the agricultural sector and permitting private Cuban farmers and cooperatives to independently lease farmland for the first time in decades. A round of leases were handed out this month.
But other reforms are proceeding slowly -- as if Castro Brother No. 2 were still overshadowed by Castro Brother No. 1. Raul Castro has kept a low profile as Cuba has continued to respond from Hurricanes Ike and Gustav. Crops were destroyed; the country’s already limited food supply became more dire, with Cuba heavily resorting on costly imports.
But a major oil find would shake up the Cuba-US chessboard and, in time, make the country petrodollar-rich. Game-changer, indeed.
No matter which side takes the '08 election, it's easy to imagine a scenario in which the American Petroleum Institute, on record with Platts as opposed to "any US unilateral sanctions," and other oil and gas interests would hustle to press either President John McCain or President Barack Obama into ditching the Cuba trade embargo -- that anachronistic Cold War vestige -- and open a window of opportunity for US Big Oil.
Such a victory would seem to level the playing field: US farmers have long enjoyed a special exemption under the embargo and are enthusiastic trading buddies with Cuba. Former Cuba diplomat Vicki Huddleston, the 1999-2002 head of the US interests section in Havana and now a scholar at Brookings Institution, is betting that whoever takes the White House in 2009 will change the US’s Cuba policy.
Then again, we've heard the prediction before, decade upon decade. The Castro brothers as Energizer Bunnies?
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