Oil Cuba China Oil

I’m lousy at predicting the future, but I can tell you with some certainty what’s coming soon in the wacky world of offshore oil. Even though the US government has dropped the ban on offshore drilling in US waters, look for everyone and their sock monkeys to be all up in arms before long over what’s happening south of Key West. And what IS happening south of Key West? They are getting ready to drill for oil off shore. So what’s the problem?

It’s Cuba.

Cuba is in the process of offering up offshore oil leases to foreign countries to begin exploring and drilling for oil off of their northwest coast — the coast closest to Key West. These new offshore rigs have the potential to be as close to Key West as the Deepwater Horizon rig was to Louisiana. The only thing is, these new rigs aren’t going to be run by BP. They will be Chinese.

Now you’d better believe there will be plenty of people on the north side of the Florida Straits all spit-flustered over this one, even though it ain’t our oil and it ain’t our ocean. Their waters, their oil, their call, and there isn’t a thing we can do about it. Jack Kennedy is long gone, and we’re not talking Soviet ICBMs here. Still, too many people here in the US tend to get possessive over anyone’s oil, especially when it’s not ours.

Now there’s no doubt that Cuba could use the oil and the income. Even The Bearded One himself recently admitted that the communist thing wasn’t working so well for them these days. Who knows? Maybe a spanking new oil industry will give them the boost they need to dig themselves out of their own red menace and join the real world, already in progress. That would be cool. A free Cuba would be a dream come true for a great many people. But probably not for the Chinese.

The downside of having the Chinese involved in the Cuban oil industry is their presence in the event of any meaningful change in Cuba. This is setting the stage for a very nasty chess game on a very small board. I can see where China would do all it could to keep Cuba communist to protect their investment in the Cuban oil industry, to the point of sending armed troops. And I think I speak for even the most laid back of Parrotheads when I say that Communist Chinese troops in North America should NOT be taken lightly.

For now, the Cuban oil industry is just getting started. It will take some years for the offshore rigs to be put in place, the wells to be drilled and the oil to be pumped. I would like to think that means there is still time for America to reverse some 60 years of total political idiocy and begin a meaningful dialogue with Cuba that could result in us having some sort of stake and share in what we cannot stop. It’s time for us to grow a brain and treat Cuba with the respect we offer any other country.

Like, say, China.

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What are the Chinese up to, really?

Ah, those crazy, madcap Chinese. So wise. So inscrutable. So very many of them. What are they playing at, do you suppose? For as long as I have been reading (and writing) about peak oil, I have been reading about the Chinese, and their wild push to Westernize. More cars! More roads! More power! But why? They hate the West. Why would they want to emulate a culture they find offensive? Wrong question.

The question to ask is this: Why are the Chinese so bent on using up all of the oil? I’ve long had my suspicions, so I have to ask: Do they know what they are doing? The Chinese, with well over a billion people milling about, can easily ramp up their oil use and seriously hasten the downside of global oil product after it peaks. And then they can keep demanding more oil until they force the depletion curve over a cliff. But why would they want to do that? Why would they want to do the very thing that would pretty much speed the end of Western civilization as we know it? Oh, wait – I just answered my own question there, didn’t I?

The Chinese produce something like 40 million bicycles a year. They were, until recently, quite the total bicycle society. They have functional mass transit and low energy homes. Their population is not used to being Western, so even now, it would be very easy for the Chinese to revert back to their original low-oil lifestyle with very little disruption. They could use up all the oil, ruin the West, and go right back to being Chinese and never bat an eye. They would, though, quietly smile, knowing what they had done.

The funny thing is, there’s not a thing you or I can do about it. They can play the “We want to be like you!” game until oil goes to $400 a barrel, and no one will think anything of it. No one will think to blame them. At some point, we will all be too busy fending for ourselves to see what happened and why – and who sped up the drop. But now you know: In the big dinner plate of life, we are General Tso’s Chicken.

Pass the soy sauce, Yuan.