• Submitted by: lena campos
• Business and Economy
• 11 / 26 / 2013

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Cuba’s President Raul Castro met with the head of Russia’s state-owned oil company Rosneft to discuss deepening cooperation in the energy sector, the communist party newspaper Granma said Monday.

A government statement published in the official government newspaper said Castro and Rosneft CEO Igor Sechin held the wide-ranging talks on Saturday.

Granma said there are “broad possibilities” for working together, including in training oil industry technicians and specialists.

The former Soviet Union was Cuba’s principal economic and political ally for 30 years, supplying it will all its oil needs on preferential terms.

Currently, the island produces enough oil to meet 40 percent of its domestic requirements, importing the rest from Venezuela at cut-rate prices.

Russia’s state-owned Zarubezhneft has been exploring for oil offshore in Cuba since December 2012, but suspended its activities in May for the Atlantic hurricane season and because of unspecified “complications of a geologic nature,” an official report said. It is supposed to resume work next year.

Cuba has divided its economic zone in the Gulf of Mexico into 59 blocs, placing 22 of them under contract to foreign companies.

They have yet, however, to find oil of commercial quality in substantive amounts. afp

Source Daily Times