Are The Chinese Drilling for Oil off the Coast of Florida? Both Side of the Question

 The Chinese are stealing our Oil off of Florida!

By Albert N. Milliron, Editor, Politisite.com

Have you ever find yourself repeating a story over and over but later found out the story wasn’t true.  For month’s now Republican Talking points has perpetrated a myth that Cuba has leased an oil rigs to China off of the Florida coast and is sucking up America’s oil by slant drilling.  When a Miami resident said a drill bit had come up on her property in south Florida, the slant drilling had gone too far. 

If you repeated this story, don’t run to confession right yet.  Your in good company. On June 17th of this year, Vice President Cheney,  in his Remarks to the Board of Directors of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce,  said the following

No Vice-President Cheney Was not Lying, George Will Retracted his mistake on the 20th of June.

George F. Will

It is always acceptable to blame the communists for failed American policies.  The truth is thereare no Chinese oil rigs between Florida’s Coast and Cuba.  A check of Maritime charts and Google world shows nothing.  The oil rigs are just not there.

If you have propagated this myth, you are not alone.  A recent survey related that 72% of those surveyed said they believed Cuba/China was drilling for oil just 45-70 miles off the Florida coast.

Take a quick breath, The oil is still there and the Communists are not set up taking away our natural resources.  Now fishing off our coast, that is a problem!

Giuliani peddles debunked “China drilling off Florida” myth

About a month ago, as the debate over coastal drilling began in earnest, Dick Cheney pushed the rhetorical envelope a bit, telling the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that “oil is being drilled right now 60 miles off the coast of Florida. We’re not doing it. The Chinese are in cooperation with the Cuban government … Even the communists have figured out that a good answer to high prices is more supply. Yet Congress has said … no to drilling off Florida.”

It has been a common Republican talking point, but it’s patently false — the Chinese are not drilling off Cuba’s coasts. The day after Cheney made the bogus claim, the V.P.’s office acknowledged that he was mistaken.

And yet, for some reason, high-profile Republicans can’t stop repeating the claim that’s already been debunked. Maybe conservatives have decided that they can’t win a debate on energy policy on the merits, so misleading people about communists stealing our oil is the better strategy. Here’s failed presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani talking to CNN’s resident right-winger, Glenn Beck, Wednesday night:

 Download | Play   Download | Play (h/t Heather)

Giuliani: “You look at Cuba. Cuba is going to allow China to drill for oil within 80 miles of Florida. And Florida had a 300-mile limit. So in essence, we have China drilling for American oil.”

Maybe it’s my imagination, but it almost seems as if high-profile Republicans have been repeating the false claim more now that it has been debunked.

Looks like even Senator Norm Coleman is getting in on the fun.

TPM has been keeping track of all the examples, and there are some real doozies in there. Some Republicans have altered the myth a little — I think Giuliani is the first to suggest that the Cubans and the Chinese are taking our oil — but they’re all repeating a charge that isn’t remotely true. Either they don’t know what they’re talking about, or they know the claim is false and repeat it anyway. At this point, it’s hard to know which is the case.

An oil-drilling myth repeated by politicians is just plain oily

The Chinese are drilling for oil off the coast of Cuba — just 45 miles from Florida — and I don’t like it. Neither does Rep. Michele Bachmann, Vice President Dick Cheney, Sen. John McCain and other righteous Americans who are so ticked off about the China connection that we can’t see straight.

Or think straight, either.

Do you want to know the problem with the Chinese taking offshore oil from Cuba while American oil drillers sit on their hands because pansy global warming freaks won’t let us punch more holes in the ocean and we pony up $4 a gallon to fill the family Hummer?

The problem is it isn’t true.

To see how deeply we are addicted to oil, check out the election-year pandering of the politicians promising to restore our God-given right to cheap gas by making sure the Chinese don’t buy Cuba’s.

What a pathetic country we have become. It’s like watching a drunk search through his pockets for enough nickels and dimes to buy one more quart of Ripple. Only, we’re the drunk.

We think we could solve our troubles if we started drilling on the outer continental shelf. Then we might be able to lower the price of gas to $3.98 gallon. Twenty years from now.

That’s because oil is priced in a global market, where the extra production would amount to a tiny drop in the world’s bucket — about 200,000 barrels a day. Whoopee.

Contrast that miniscule difference with what might be achieved by improving fuel efficiencies for cars and light trucks.

According to the Washington-based Center for Economic and Policy Research, the United States could cut consumption by 3.3 million barrels a day (16 times the effect of expanded drilling) if the average auto fuel efficiency was 32 miles per gallon.

WASHINGTON, May 8 — In 1977, the United States and Cuba signed a treaty that evenly divided the Florida Straits to preserve each country’s economic rights. They included access to vast underwater oil and gas fields on both sides of the line.  Offshore Drilling Near Cuba

Now, with energy costs soaring, plans are under way to drill this year — but all on the Cuban side.

With only modest energy needs and no ability of its own to drill, Cuba has negotiated lease agreements with China and other energy-hungry countries to extract resources for themselves and for Cuba.

Cuba’s drilling plans have been in place for several years, but now that China, India and others are involved and fuel prices are unusually high, a growing number of lawmakers and business leaders in the United States are starting to complain. They argue that the United States’ decades-old ban against drilling in coastal waters is driving up domestic energy costs and, in this case, is giving two of America’s chief economic competitors access to energy at the United States’ expense.

“This is the irony of ironies,” Charles T. Drevna, executive vice president of the National Petrochemical and Refiners Association, said of Cuba’s collaboration with China and India. “We have chosen to lock up our resources and stand by to be spectators while these two come in and benefit from things right in our own backyard.”

The United States Geological Survey estimates that the energy field on Cuba’s side alone may have 4.6 billion barrels of oil and 9.8 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. That much energy is equivalent to just a few months of the United States’ total energy consumption.

Cuban oil rigs could be built 45 miles off South Florida

HAVANA, CUBA — Imagine oil rigs drilling in deep waters just 45 miles off the coast of South Florida. Refineries process the oil in Cuba and sell it across the Caribbean and beyond. Canadian and Mexican companies supply billions of dollars in equipment and services.

This could happen, as Havana is inviting foreign companies to explore its probable oil and natural gas reserves while Washington’s embargo against the communist-led island keeps U.S. companies locked out.

South Florida is watching closely amid debate over drilling near its shores and concerns about U.S. energy policy. Oil companies increasingly seek to tap Cuba’s deep-water reserves now that oil prices are soaring and profits are more likely.

“In 34 years following Cuba, I’ve never seen an issue like this — so strategically important to the United States,” said Kirby Jones, president of Washington-based Alamar Associates, who advises U.S. companies on Cuba and opposes the U.S. embargo.

Cuba is courting oil investors to slash its dependence on foreign fuels. The cash-strapped island can’t afford to import all it needs, especially with today’s oil prices topping $100 a barrel. The island long relied on the Soviet Union for subsidized oil and now depends on cheap supplies from Venezuela that it pays for with services from its doctors and other professionals.

Havana began opening to foreign investment in the early 1990s after the loss of Soviet aid, and Cuba now produces almost half the oil and natural gas it consumes. It drills mainly for heavy crude on or near shore with help from Canadian companies.

But the big prize lies in deep-water reservoirs miles off the north shore in the Gulf of Mexico. By some estimates, the area holds almost as much oil and natural gas as the coveted Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska — enough to meet Cuban demand for years.

Havana is forging deals with companies from Norway, Malaysia, India, Vietnam, Spain and other nations to explore dozens of its 59 deep-water blocks. Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva visited in January to seal contracts for Petrobras, the global leader in deep-water drilling.

Analysts say it will take several more years and hundreds of millions of dollars for the companies to figure out where to drill in waters often a mile deep.

Urban legends R us: China drilling myth repeated

 Pity poor Leroy Vetsch of Brewster, who seems to be the treasurer of the Nobles County Republican Party*

Today, he had a letter published in the Worthington Globe.  It reads:

Why did Congressman Tim Walz vote against energy development off the continental shelf of the United States? H.R. 3089, the “No More Excuses Energy Act of 2007,” failed to pass on a vote of 226 to 183.

If China can drill for oil near the continental shelf of Florida, why can’t our country allow it? Seventeen billion barrels of oil would certainly come in handy right now while we continue to research and develop alternative sources of energy.

Yes, a respected member of the community repeats the false urban legend about the Chinese drilling for oil off the Florida coast. Readers may recall that we covered this–and endorsed GOP candidate Brian Davis’s role in repeating the misinformation–on Saturday. 

Here are the pertinent facts:

In Chinese oil drilling off Florida coast? ‘Akin to urban legend’, senator says, by  McClatchy Washington Bureau reporters Erika Bolstad and Kevin G. Hall wrote

As Congress has debated energy policy over the past several days, an unusual argument keeps surfacing in support of drilling off the U.S. coastline and in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Why, ask some Republicans, should the United States be thwarted from drilling in its own territory when just 50 miles off the Florida coastline the Chinese government is drilling for oil under Cuban leases?

Yet no one can prove that the Chinese are drilling anywhere off Cuba’s shoreline. The China-Cuba connection is “akin to urban legend,” said Sen. Mel Martinez, a Republican from Florida who opposes drilling off the coast of his state but who backs exploration in ANWR.

“China is not drilling in Cuba’s Gulf of Mexico waters, period,” said Jorge Pinon, an energy fellow with the Center for Hemispheric Policy at the University of Miami and an expert in oil exploration in the Gulf of Mexico. Martinez cited Pinon’s research when he took to the Senate floor Wednesday to set the record straight.

Even so, the Chinese-drilling-in-Cuba legend has gained momentum and has been swept up in Republican arguments to open up more U.S. territory to domestic production. . . .

The AP story reports more facts in Cheney oil comment attacked:

And read about a Democratic alternative: The Responsible Federal Oil and Gas Lease Act of 2008 (H.R. 6251).  From the House Natural Resources committee:

. . .a direct response to the facts outlined in the recent House Natural Resources Committee Majority Staff report, “The Truth About America’s Energy: Big Oil Stockpiles Supplies and Pockets Profits“, that illustrate how energy companies are not using the federal lands and waters that are already open to drilling.  The legislation is co-sponsored by Reps. Rahm Emanuel (D-IL), Maurice Hinchey (D-NY), Ed Markey (D-MA), and John Yarmuth (D-KY).

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