Cuba Oil Drilling Tests U.S. on Protecting Florida or Embargo

By Katarzyna Klimasinska

Dec. 8 (Bloomberg) — Four U.S. inspectors armed with safety glasses and notebooks will set out on a mission next month to protect Florida’s beaches from a Cuban threat.

They’ll rendezvous in Trinidad and Tobago with the Scarabeo 9, a rig headed to deep waters off Cuba to drill for oil about 70 miles (113 kilometers) south of Florida’s Key West.

Repsol YPF SA is making the Scarabeo 9 available to the U.S. inspectors before the rig starts drilling closer to Florida than the BP Plc well that failed last year in the Gulf of Mexico, causing the biggest U.S. offshore oil spill. The exploration poses an environmental, political and diplomatic challenge to the U.S. more than 50 years after cutting off relations with Cuba’s communist regime.

The Obama administration’s dilemma is “what steps to take for environmental protection and how much to honor current Cuba policy,” Dan Whittle, Cuba program director at the New York- based Environmental Defense Fund, said in an interview.

In the aftermath of the revolution that brought Fidel Castro to power, the U.S. banned exports to Cuba in 1960, withdrew diplomatic recognition, backed the failed Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961 and imposed a full trade embargo in 1962.

Now generations of animosity between the two nations limit cooperation on safety standards and cleanup precautions for the Cuba drilling planned by Madrid-based Repsol, which would be followed by state-owned companies from Malaysia to Venezuela. A conference on regional oil-spill response being held this week in Nassau, Bahamas, may provide a forum for discussions by U.S. and Cuban representatives.

Juan Jacomino, a spokesman for the Cuban Interests Section at the Swiss embassy in Washington, declined in an interview to comment on drilling off of the island nation.

Spare Parts

Repsol can use the Scarabeo 9 without violating the U.S. trade embargo because it was built at shipyards in China and Singapore, and fewer than 10 percent of its components are American, according to its owner, Eni SpA.

The sanctions would block spare parts from the U.S. for the rig’s blowout preventer, a safety device that failed in the BP spill. The restrictions also require Helix Energy Solutions Group Inc. of Houston, which provides oil-spill containment equipment for Repsol in the Gulf of Mexico, to seek a waiver to do so in Cuban waters in case of an accident.

U.S. companies seeking to do business with Cuba must ask the Commerce Department, which considers most applications “subject to a policy of denial,” the agency says on its website. The Treasury Department weighs requests to travel from the U.S. to Cuba.

Granting too few permits for spill prevention and response would keep contractors from offering the technology and services developed after the BP spill, Lee Hunt, president of the Houston-based International Association of Drilling Contractors, said in an interview.

Cuban Exiles

Approving too many licenses would undermine the embargo, enriching a regime listed by the U.S. State Department as a nation supporting terrorism along with Iran, Sudan and Syria, according to anti-Castro lawmakers such as Republican Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida, who heads the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

U.S. “assistance, guidance and technical advice” to Repsol, including the planned visit to Scarabeo 9, may violate the law by “helping to facilitate” the company’s work and providing the Cuban government “with a financial windfall,” Ros-Lehtinen said in a Nov. 1 letter to President Barack Obama.

Ros-Lehtinen, who immigrated from Cuba with her family at age 8, is a leader among Cuban exiles in South Florida who have opposed easing U.S. restrictions. Florida, which has been a swing state in presidential elections, also has been a bastion of opposition to oil drilling that opponents say could despoil the beaches that are a prime draw for tourists.

Florida Drilling Foes

Lawmakers such as Senator Bill Nelson, a Florida Democrat, have fought to keep drilling out of U.S. waters in the eastern Gulf of Mexico bordering Florida.

Nelson and Senator Robert Menendez, a New Jersey Democrat, introduced a bill Nov. 9 that would require foreign companies drilling in Cuban waters to pay for damage to U.S. territory without liability limits. Senator Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican, joined as a cosponsor.

Oil from BP’s spill tarred beaches 150 miles away in Florida’s northwestern Panhandle.

Now Floridians are faced with drilling under the jurisdiction of Cubans, who “don’t have the resources” to control a blowout, Jorge Pinon, an energy consultant and visiting research fellow at the Cuban Research Institute at Florida International University in Miami, said in an interview.

“If the U.S. is not willing to help” in an emergency, “the resources are going to come from Canada, Norway and the U.K., and it will take a very long time,” said Pinon, who led Amoco Corp. units in Mexico City and retired from BP in 2003, according to his biography.

Repsol’s Contract

Repsol signed a contract with Cuba in 2000, according to the company’s website, and confirmed the presence of oil with a Norwegian rig in 2004. Repsol will drill in about 5,000 feet (1.5 kilometers) to 6,000 feet of water, about the depth of BP’s Macondo well, according to Pinon.

Petroliam Nasional Bhd., or Petronas, based in Kuala Lumpur; New Delhi-based Oil & Natural Gas Corp.; Hanoi-based Vietnam Oil & Gas Group, known as PetroVietnam; Caracas-based Petroleos de Venezuela SA; and Sonangol SA of Luanda, Angola, also hold Cuban blocks, Pinon said.

U.S. officials say they are doing all they can to ensure safe drilling off Cuba.

“We are quite focused, and have been for many, many months” on “doing anything within our power to protect U.S. shores and U.S. coastline,” Tommy Beaudreau, director of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, an industry regulator, said in a Nov. 29 interview at Bloomberg’s Washington office.

Wild Well Control

The administration has issued some licenses to U.S. companies to respond to a spill in Cuban waters, Mark Toner, a spokesman for the State Department, said in an e-mail. He didn’t say how many have been approved, and the Commerce and Treasury departments didn’t respond to e-mailed requests for comment.

Wild Well Control Inc. of Houston is one permit recipient, according to Hunt of the drilling contractors’ trade group. The company didn’t respond to e-mails and phone calls seeking comment.

“Helix plans to build a new subsea containment cap to safeguard drilling operations in Cuba,” Cameron Wallace, a spokesman for that company said in an e-mail about its request for U.S. licenses. “The cap and associated equipment will be staged at a U.S. port near to the drilling site to minimize response time.”

Walking the Deck

In their visit to the Scarabeo 9, two inspectors from the U.S. Coast Guard and two from the Interior Department will walk the deck and check generators, the positioning system and firefighting equipment, Brian Khey, who will be on the team, said in an interview.

The Americans will watch a firefighting simulation and conduct an abandon-ship drill, according to Khey, the supervisor at the Coast Guard’s Outer Continental Shelf National Center of Expertise in Morgan City, Louisiana,

While the visitors will discuss with Repsol any deficiencies they find, they won’t have enforcement powers, Khey said. Nor will they be able to check the blowout preventer or the well casing and drilling fluid that will be used on site, according to the Interior Department.

Scarabeo 9 was built “according to the latest and most advanced international standards available at the time of her design and construction,” Rome-based Eni said in an e-mailed statement. “Health, safety and environmental protection are always a top priority.”

Eni Subsidiary

The vessel “is one of the very few units in the industry which is using a technology which is not an American one,” Pietro Franco Tali, chief executive officer of Eni’s oilfield- services subsidiary, Saipem SpA, said on an Oct. 27, 2010, conference call.

One U.S. component is the blowout preventer, made by Houston-based National Oilwell Varco Inc. The company hasn’t applied for a license to do business with Cuba and doesn’t plan to, Chief Financial Officer Clay Williams said in a phone interview.

That means rig operators will have to seek training and spare parts in Europe or Asia, according to Hunt, whose group represents 1,494 companies including Saipem.

“It’s like buying a Mercedes and being told you have to go to a Ford dealer for parts,” Hunt said in an interview.

The results of Cuba’s drilling may affect U.S. energy policy. Success would put pressure on the U.S. to open its waters surrounding Florida for exploration, Pinon said.

A serious accident off of Cuba could throw the industry out of the Gulf of Mexico, according to Brian Petty, executive vice president for governmental affairs of the drilling contractors’ group.

“A mess” in Cuban waters would lead critics of drilling to say, “Stop it, don’t let it go on anywhere,” Petty said.

–With assistance from Nicole Gaouette in Washington and Nguyen Dieu Tu Uyen in Hanoi. Editors: Judy Pasternak, Larry Liebert

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Larry Liebert at lliebert@bloomberg.net

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Iran Conducting Anti-U.S. Operations from Latin America – Atlas Shrugs

Obama is neither inept nor stupid; he is, in fact, dangerous. Obama’s sanction of Iran and aiding and abetting in the putdown of the freedom revolution in Iran in 2009 ranks, IMAO, as his most monstrous failure, among countless others.

• Congress Rebuffs Obama’s Pro-jihad Pleas to Appease, Aid Nuclear Iran
• Obama Rejected Numerous Proposals to Retrieve Lost U.S. Drone: Officials Confirm Authenticity of Iranian TV Images Showing Drone
• Iran exhibits US drone undamaged. US and Israeli intelligence shocked

A small number of us in the blogosphere (those concerned with the global jihad) have been documenting the increasing ties between Iran and Venezuela, Brazil, and Cuba. Further, the infiltration of Hezb’allah in Latin America and particularly in Mexico is well known. Hezb’allah exploits the drug cartels’ narco-transit routes in Mexico…..

Iran Conducting Anti-U.S. Operations from Latin America – Atlas Shrugs.

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Dutch Fairmount Escorts Scarabeo 9 Rig around the Cape of Good Hope, South Africa

Fairmount Marine, a Dutch marine contractor for ocean towage and heavy lift transportation, announces that its powerful tug Fairmount Glacier has successfully assisted the new build semi submergible drilling rig Scarbeo 9 sailing around Cape of Good Hope.

For this operation Fairmount was contracted by Saipem Energies directly after the successful installation of  the Usan FPSO Unit offshore Nigeria.

Fairmount Glacier was contracted to sail towards a meeting point offshore South Africa where she met with Scarabeo 9 and escorted her safely around the Cape of Good Hope. Despite the bad weather encountered during the route, the  convoy proceeded at an average speed of 4.5 to 5.0 knots.

The semi submersible drilling rig Scarabeo 9 has a length of 115 metres, is 80 metres wide and her depth – from keel to main deck – is 35 metres. After they had safely cleared the South African Coast, the Master of Scarabeo 9 thanked Fairmount  Glacier for her continued support throughout the voyage. The Fairmount Glacier returned to Cape Town.

Source

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Cuba remembers Ernest Hemingway with a Washington bar

By Kate Dailey
BBC News Magazine

Tucked inside the Swiss Embassy, the cocktail area celebrates the writer who made his home in CubaCuban and American politicians have celebrated together at the opening of Hemingway’s, an invitation-only bar located in a Washington, DC embassy.

It started like a typical Washington DC function. Men and women in dark suits milled around a formal room in the Swiss Embassy, crystal chandeliers sparkling overhead. Waiters carried around glasses of red and white wine while guests made polite small-talk.

But after a series of speeches, guests were led to the back of the room, and into an entirely different experience.

They had entered Hemingway’s, a bar celebrating the American writer who made his home in Cuba. There, the floors were covered in terracotta tile, while wooden fans whirred above. Bartenders poured cocktails under a brass replica of Hemingway’s signature.

Aside from the fact that it serves liquor, Hemingway’s isn’t a bar in the traditional sense. Tucked inside the embassy, where the Cuban Interests Section resides, the bar has a strict invitation-only list.

It will be used for entertaining guests of the Interest Section, so tourists hoping to catch happy hour are out of luck.

The bar’s brass sign replicates Hemingway’s signature

It’s illegal for the bar to conduct any commerce, but the embassy is free from the trade embargo that forbids importing products from the communist country. So drinks were on the house, made with Cuban rum that’s normally impossible to find in the US.

Terry McAullife, the former head of the Democratic National Committee, ordered the first drink – Havana Club Rum, straight.

Mr McAullife, who travelled to Cuba last year as part of a trade mission, thinks that doing more business with Cuba could be a key to creating American jobs.

“It’s a huge market, and every other country in the world is already there,” he says. “And Cubans love American products.”

From Versailles to Havana

But the opening of the bar wasn’t simply about facilitating Cuban-American commerce.

Instead, the night was more about celebrating Ernest Hemingway, described as a “cultural bridge” by Jennifer Phillips, the grand-daughter of Hemingway’s editor. Ms Phillips is co-founder of the Finca Vigia foundation, devoted to preserving Hemingway’s Cuban home.

She spoke before the opening of the bar, reminding the audience that Hemingway is treasured by both nations.

The chief of the Cuban Interests Section told of a fishing contest between Castro and Hemingway

Neither the US nor Cuba have official embassies in the other’s country; instead both have Interests Sections located in the Swiss embassies.

Neither group has a history of being particularly friendly towards the host nation, though Cuba-watchers hope that Hemingway’s signals a positive change.

When the Interest Section in DC was due for a renovation, the Cuban diplomats decided to reclaim a bit of the space as their own.

“The room was like the palace of Versailles,” says Juan Leon Lamigueiro, deputy chief of the diplomatic mission. “There was very little Cuban.”

“So we decided to convert the warehouse annex into a bar dedicated to Hemingway.”

While mojitos and Cuba Libras were being poured in the small back room that houses the bar, a 12-piece band played Latin music in the front of the hall.

A mural promoting Fidel Castro displayed prominently at the entrance of the embassy.

Sandra Levinson, resplendent in a sparkling black and blue blouse, spun and twirled with her partner. MS Levinson, executive director of the Center for Cuban Studies in New York City and director of the centre’s Cuban Art Space, learned to dance during her many trips to Cuba, and had travelled down to Washington specifically to attend the opening.

As the crowd subsided, the hosts brought out cigars – the famous commodity that is forbidden in the US.

Reporters, bureaucrats, and Cuban emigrants happily puffed away – but more than one skittish politico declined to have their pictures taken enjoying Cuban contraband.

“You can write this,” one conceded. “An anonymous Hill staffer said the mojitos were fantastic.”

Source

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Anti-Castro Cuban Americans Fret Over Drilling Rig

Scarabeo 9

by Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Nov 4, 2011 (IPS) – With a giant deep-water oil rig steaming slowly toward the Gulf of Mexico and the waters just off Cuba, the administration of President Barack Obama is being pushed and pulled by different interests over what, if anything, to do about it.

On the one hand, anti-Castro Cuban-American and other right-wing lawmakers here are expressing growing exasperation over what they see as Washington’s failure to do whatever it can to prevent the new, 750-million-dollar Scarabeo 9 from fulfilling its mission to begin exploratory drilling off the island’s northwest coast by early next year.

They appear increasingly worried that the rig, which will be operated initially by the Spanish oil company, Repsol-YPF, may find commercially exploitable quantities of oil under Cuba’s waters and thus provide a “windfall” for Havana that will be used to help sustain the Communist government led by President Raul Castro.

On the other hand, some environmental and anti-embargo groups, including business associations that want to increase trade with Havana, are calling on Obama to engage the Cuban government more directly in the interests of both protecting the Gulf’s ecology from a possible spill and ensuring that U.S. oil service companies will be able to help contain the damage should such an accident take place.

Less than 18 months after the Deepwater Horizon blow-out that sent nearly five million barrels of oil pouring into the Gulf over a three-month period, they argue that Washington should work closely with both the Cuban government and Repsol, as well as other third- country companies that will operate the rig, to both minimise the risk of a similar accident and contain its impact if there is one.

So far, the administration appears to be trying to steer a middle course, satisfying neither side.

The U.S. Geological Service estimates that there could be undiscovered reserves of up to six billion barrels of oil under Cuban waters only 100 kms from the Florida Keys, while others have suggested there could be as much as several times that amount.

And while it would take at least a couple of years before those reserves could be tapped commercially, they would provide a huge boost to the struggling Cuban economy, which currently depends on the largess of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez for more than two-thirds of its daily crude oil requirements.

“We are extremely concerned over what seems to be a lack of a coordinated effort by the Administration to prevent a State Sponsor of Terrorism, just 90 miles form our shores, from engaging in risky deep sea oil drilling projects that will harm U.S. interests as well as extend another economic lifeline to the Cuban regime,” complained four Cuban-American congressmen in a letter to Obama earlier this week.

They demanded, among other things, that the administration investigate whether any part of the Scarabeo has been made with U.S.- origin parts in violation of the 49-year-old U.S. trade embargo, and whether Obama’s own Interior Department may itself be violating the law by providing Repsol with technical advice.

“The administration needs to provide answers and change course,” said Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, one of the four lawmakers and chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, who in September also helped persuade 35 of her House colleagues to sign a letter to Repsol’s chairman urging him to immediately halt the company’s plans to drill.

The signatories included most lawmakers from Florida whose Gulf coast would almost certainly be affected by any spill originating in the drilling area.

Repsol has become the main target of Congressional opposition to the project primarily because it is the only publicly-traded company with substantial investments in the U.S. in a multinational consortium that includes the state oil companies of Malaysia, Brazil, Norway, Angola, and several other countries.

Repsol, which has issued repeated assurances that the rig’s operation and equipment will meet U.S. standards, has agreed to permit a team from the U.S. Coast Guard and the Interior Department’s Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) to inspect the Scarabeo and its drilling equipment when it reaches Trinidad and Tobago later this month.

While that inspection won’t be as comprehensive as Washington would like, BSEE director Michael Bromwich told a hearing of the House Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources Congressional Wednesday, “In our judgement, it’s a lot better than nothing.”

The administration is also using the multilateral International Maritime Organisation (IMO) to have its Coast Guard officers sit down with Cuban and other officials from the northern Caribbean next month to discuss measures for dealing with spills under the 1990 International Convention on Oil Pollution, Preparedness, Response and Cooperation (OPRC).

In fact, the 750-million-dollar Scarabeo is considered pretty much state of the art. It was designed by Norwegian engineers; its structure was built in China; and it was fitted with the latest deep- water drilling technology in Singapore.

But the fear of a major accident has prompted a number of environmental groups and independent experts to urge the administration to become significantly more engaged with both the Cuban government and all of the companies that will be operating the rig.

In particular, they want the administration to issue a general license for U.S. oil services companies to work in Cuba, which would permit them to respond quickly to any spill or related emergency resulting from drilling operations. Under the trade embargo, each company would have to apply for a special license to do so.

“We are very naïve to think that, in the case of Cuba, a handful of individual exports licenses could prevent and contain a deepwater oil exploratory well blow-out,” Jorge Pinon, a former oil executive and consultant at Florida International University, told the Subcommittee.

“A general license to export and supply equipment, personnel and services to international oil companies operating in Cuba in the case of an emergency is urgently needed,” he stressed, noting that more than 5,000 vessels, millions of metres of booms; and nearly eight million litres of dispersant were deployed to contain the Deepwater Horizon spill.

That message was echoed by Daniel Whittle, who directs the Cuba programme at the Environmental Defense Fund and who organized a delegation headed by President George H.W. Bush’s environment chief, William Reilly, that visited Cuba earlier this year. Reilly was the co-chairman of the national commission that investigated the Deepwater disaster.

“First and foremost, the administration should take steps now to ensure that U.S.-based companies are pre-authorized to assist in preventing and containing major oil spills in Cuban waters,” he testified.

“It’s critical to get U.S. companies into the act because of their technology, know-how, and proximity,” agreed Jake Colvin, vice president of the National Foreign Trade Council (NFTC), a business lobby that represents major multi-national corporations here. “While the administration has the authority to license a rapid response by those companies in the event of an accident, it hasn’t yet authorized it.”

“The reason they’re not issuing a general license is entirely political,” according to Sarah Stephen, the director of the Washington-based Center for Democracy in the Americas, which has lobbied against the embargo and last summer published a booklet on Cuba’s drilling plans.

“The administration clearly understands the urgency here, but it’s worried about the pressure from Congress, especially from the Floridians,” she said.

*Jim Lobe’s blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at http://www.lobelog.com.

Source

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Iran Opens 500mln euro Credit Line for Cuba

TEHRAN (FNA)- Iran has allocated a credit line of 500 million euros (about 685 million US dollars) to Cuba.

Abel Salas, vice president of Cuba‘s National Institute of Water Resources, announced the allocation Wednesday at a meeting with Iran’s deputy energy minister in Tehran, Tehran Times reported on Thursday.

Salas expressed the hope that some parts of the credit line would be used for the reconstruction of Cuba’s energy system.

Iran and Cuba signed a protocol for economic and trade cooperation in September during Iranian Vice President Mohammad Reza Rahimi‘s visit to Havana. The protocol stipulated that Iran would expand its credit to Cuba from 270 million to 680 million US dollars.

It also included accords on the two countries’ collaboration in industry, energy, trade, health, finance, biotechnology and hydraulics.

Iran has been producing equipment for rail systems and synthetic media for the Cuban market under a 2009 agreement. The expansion of credit will also support the program.

Iran has in recent years expanded friendly ties with Latin America, specially in economic, trade and industrial fields.

Since taking office in 2005, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has expanded Iran’s cooperation with many Latin American states, including Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Brazil and Cuba.

The strong and rapidly growing ties between Iran and Latin America have raised eyebrows in the US and its western allies since Tehran and Latin nations have forged an alliance against the imperialist and colonialist powers.

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US Oil-Spill Response Cos Seek Permission to Operate in Cuban Waters

by  Tennille Tracy

Several U.S. companies are asking the Obama administration for permission to respond to potential oil spills in Cuban waters, a top offshore drilling regulator said Wednesday, hoping to overcome embargo restrictions that currently limit their ability to do so.

The companies’ requests coincide with a growing concern among oil-industry experts who say the U.S. embargo on Cuba could cripple the ability of spill-containment companies to respond to potential spills that start in Cuban waters but then move to U.S. shores.

Speaking at a congressional hearing Wednesday, Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement Director Michael Bromwich said several companies have asked the U.S. Commerce Department for licenses that would allow them to use subsea well containment systems and other types of equipment to respond to spills in Cuban waters.

Bromwich said he had “a high level of confidence” the Commerce Department would approve the licenses, in large part because it had already issued separate approvals for oil-spill containment systems and cleanup items. U.S. government agencies “are very much on alert, looking for the licenses [applications] as they come in and my understanding is that they’re giving them very rapid attention and they’re approving them as promptly as they can.”

The administration’s efforts are not without controversy. The chairman of the House Energy and Mineral Resources Subcommittee, Rep. Doug Lamborn (R., Colo.), said Wednesday that he is concerned “this administration will weaken the U.S. embargo on Cuba.”

Earlier in the week, the head of the House Foreign Affairs Committee sent a letter to President Barack Obama asking him to do more to prevent Cuba’s oil-drilling plans. “This scheme endangers U.S. security and environmental interests, and will enrich the Cuban regime,” Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R., Fla.), a Cuban-born American, said.

Many environmental and oil-industry experts have taken a different approach and have urged the administration to give broad flexibility to U.S. companies that are equipped to respond to spills.

They contend Cuba will pursue oil exploration, regardless of whether the U.S. disapproves, so the U.S. should simply prepare for possible accidents.

Cuba’s offshore drilling plans get under way in coming months when Spanish company Repsol starts to conduct exploratory drilling off the country’s northern coast. Repsol is transporting a Chinese-built rig to be used for the exploration work.

Repsol has voluntarily agreed to allow U.S. officials to inspect the rig before it enters Cuban waters. The company has also agreed to comply with U.S. drilling standards.

Copyright (c) 2011 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.

Source

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Feds approve Murphy drilling project using Helix emergency equipment

Cameron Wallace, left, and Eric Poller, a subsea engineer for Helix Well Ops, look at a new oil spill-containment system developed by Houston’s Helix Energy Solutions. (Michael Paulsen/Houston Chronicle)

by Jennifer A. Dlouhy

Federal regulators on Monday issued a permit to the first offshore drilling operation planning to rely on a Houston company’s cap-and-flow containment system in case of a disaster.

The Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement gave the permit to Murphy Exploration & Production Co., allowing the firm to drill a sidetrack well at its Thunder Hawk field about 150 miles southeast of New Orleans.

Other companies have successfully submitted oil spill response plans that would rely on the capping stack developed by Helix Well Containment Group or a separate system devised by the Marine Well Containment Co. But Murphy is the first firm to win regulators’ sign off for an emergency response plan involving Helix’s full flowback system.

The cap-and-flow system caps the well and contains any additional flowing oil in case it is out of control. The entire system involves a capping stack installed on the well head and a flowback system designed to direct the crude to vessels floating overhead.

Although some wells require only the containment system, the cap-and-flow equipment is geared toward operations with higher pressure. Regulators say the cap-and-flow program can help maintain the integrity of an underwater well in cases where the capping stack alone might not do the trick.

The Helix cap-and-flow system is capable of sending 55,000 barrels of oil and 95 million cubic feet of gas per day to the floating ships.

Separately, Helix is asking the Obama administration for a license to provide its containment equipment in case of a spill from offshore drilling in Cuban waters. The Spanish company Repsol is set to begin drilling a deep-water exploratory well north of the island nation — just 50 miles from south Florida — in December or January.

Helix spokesman Cameron Wallace said the ultimate scope of services that would be offered is still under consideration “and no firm commitments have yet been made.”

The U.S. trade embargo against Cuba generally bars U.S. companies from exporting equipment and services to it, but American firms can get special approval from the Treasury Department.

“We believe that it is important to make proven solutions, similar to our Helix Fast Response System, available for any drilling project that could potentially impact the nation’s coastlines,” Wallace said. “Helix’s goal is to make some of these spill containment technologies available while fully complying with federal trade regulations.”

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