Coast Guard preparing for possible Cuba oil spills

Coast Guard preparing for possible Cuba oil spills
By LESLEY CLARK
McClatchy Newspapers

The new U.S. Coast Guard commander for the southeastern United States
said Thursday that his agency is looking "very seriously" at Cuba's
plans to drill for oil and reviewing contingency plans in the event of a
spill that could reach the Florida coast.

"We are actively looking at all the different implications and scenarios
to make sure our plans are revised and up to date," Rear Adm. William D.
Baumgartner told editors at The Miami Herald. He said other agencies
also are reviewing their plans.

The Spanish oil giant Repsol has leased several undersea blocks from the
Cuban government and is expected to begin drilling next year with a rig,
the Scarabeo 9, that is being built in China in part to avoid conflicts
with the U.S. trade embargo on Cuba.

The first block Repsol is expected to explore lies under 5,600 feet of
water - 600 feet deeper than the water where BP's Deepwater Horizon well
exploded in April - and about 55 miles south of Florida's Marquesas Key.

Baumgartner acknowledged that the United States has no emergency
response agreement with Cuba for oil spills. The U.S. signed such an
agreement with Mexico in 1980.

"We have longstanding agreements with Mexico about how we would manage
incidents and the . . . plan is routinely monitored," Baumgartner said.
"There is not a bilateral U.S.-Cuba agreement on oil spills right now."

While some oil industry analysts worry that Cuba would be ill prepared
for an oil spill, Baumgartner noted that Repsol would be responsible for
cleaning up any spill that entered U.S. waters and that the Coast Guard
would manage any cleanup in U.S. waters.

"There are international agreements that discuss the notification and
information sharing that has to happen between countries," he said.

In addition, Repsol's drilling rig reportedly will be outfitted with a
blowout preventer manufactured in the United States.

Baumgartner noted that even without an agreement, the United States
shared information with Cuba during the Deepwater Horizon spill over the
summer "so that they knew what was going on."

The State Department said last summer and repeated this week that U.S.
oil spill cleanup service companies could be licensed through the
Treasury Department to provide oil spill prevention support to companies
working in Cuba.

Baumgartner said the U.S. government is also looking to see if it needs
to revise oil spill tracking computer models that were developed in 2004
when Repsol last drilled exploratory wells off the Cuban coast.

"We have area contingency plans about how we would deal with oil that
are pretty much well established," he said. "What we would look at here
is what would we need to change or update, what are some other things we
might need to be aware of with this particular scenario.

"The primary responsibility lies with Repsol to address this, but we're
going to look to be prepared to do whatever we need to do," he said.

Posted on Thu, Sep. 30, 2010 11:20 PM

http://www.kansascity.com/2010/09/30/2264492/coast-guard-preparing-for-possible.html