Sometime next year, Cuba plans to begin drilling a major oil field off its northern coast that might do what little else has done - bring change to U.S-Cuba relations.
In a rare confluence of circumstances, oil could grease the wheels for the two bitter enemies to come together in the middle of the Florida Straits out of mutual need, experts say.
Getting there would require a sea change in U.S. policy - namely putting a major hole in the U.S. trade embargo imposed against Cuba in 1962 to topple Fidel Castro's communist government.
If the embargo stays as is, a nearby source of oil will be off-limits to the energy-thirsty United States and the American oil industry will miss out on billions of dollars of business.
Embargo opponents rule out change until President George W. Bush, who has toughened the embargo, leaves office next year.
Even then they can expect a fight from influential Cuban-American leaders, who argue that helping Cuba produce oil will aid the Cuban government and undermine the 46-year-old embargo's reason for being.
"We think what really needs to happen in Cuba is for that system to change," U.S. Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez told Reuters.
But embargo foes say the combination of economics, energy needs and environmental concerns, as well as new leaders in the two countries make easing the embargo possible.
"The pro-embargo status quo is really threatened right now," said Sarah Stephens, director of the Centre for Democracy in the Americas. "The sands are running out of the clock on the policy and I think that has the pro-embargo folks worried."
DRILLING
The U.S. Geological Survey has estimated the Cuban field holds at least 5 billion barrels of recoverable oil and 10 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.
In a few years, Cuba could be producing 525,000 barrels of oil per day, enough to make it energy independent and perhaps even an oil exporter, said former oil company executive Jorge Pinon, now a researcher at the University of Miami. Cuba consumes 145,000 barrels daily, of which 92,000 come from Venezuela.
The government has sold oil concessions to seven companies and has said a consortium of Spanish, Indian and Norwegian companies will drill the first production well in the first half of 2009.
Drilling was supposed to begin this year and has been put off twice due to undisclosed factors that U.S. experts say likely include difficulty getting a rig because global drilling activity is high, the need for more downstream facilities to handle the oil and possible effects of the U.S. embargo.
The Cuban field lies as much as 6 miles (10 km) below the sea surface, depths at which U.S. production technology is superior, said Cuba oil expert Jonathan Benjamin-Alvarado at the University of Nebraska-Omaha.
