Cuba to add new docks, terminal at Cienfuegos port

Posted on Friday, 10.01.10
Cuba to add new docks, terminal at Cienfuegos port
By ANDREA RODRIGUEZ
Associated Press Writer

HAVANA -- Cuba will build three additional loading docks and a terminal
large enough to accommodate modern supertankers by 2014 at its port in
Cienfuegos, part of the communist government's effort with Venezuela to
rehabilitate and modernize the area's oil refinery.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, a self-described socialist and close
friend of Fidel Castro, attended the December 2007 re-inauguration of
the Soviet-era facility on central Cuba's southern coast, and since then
it has refined 55 million barrels.

Cuba and Venezuelan plan to expand capacity there to 150,000 barrels
refined per day and the new berths and terminal will ensure tankers
carrying more oil can come and go more freely, said Luis Medina,
director of Cuba's national port authority, at a news conference Friday
in Havana, 185 miles (300 kilometers) northwest of Cienfuegos.

Chavez's government ships more than 100,000 barrels of oil a day to Cuba
in exchange for island doctors who provide free medical care in his
country and other social services. The expanded capacity at Cienfuegos
will allow Venezuela to ship more petroleum products that can be refined
on the island.

Cuba independently operates its largest oil field, the Varadero field
discovered by Russian scientists in 1971, but the communist government
relies on energy companies from Canada, Spain, Norway, India, Malaysia
and China for other drilling operations.

The government has laid out zones in the Gulf of Mexico where private
energy companies, mostly from Canada and Europe, have said they could
one day drill deep-water test wells searching for crude.

A 2004 test well by a Spanish company was not considered commercially
viable, however, and Washington's 48-year-old trade embargo prohibits
U.S. companies from investing in Cuban oil exploration and production,
even though the island's Gulf waters are close to the Florida coast.

A meeting of U.S., Mexican and Cuban scientists wrapped up Wednesday in
Sarasota, Florida, with an outline for a plan to better protect the Gulf
of Mexico and western Caribbean through collaborative management and
conservation.

It includes actions that scientists in each country will undertake to
conserve coral reefs, marine mammals, sea turtles and shark and other
fish populations. Examples include a regional monitoring protocol for
sea turtles to make sure results are compatible among nations and
continued research expeditions focused on sharks.

http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/10/01/1852977/cuba-to-add-new-docks-terminal.html