Drilling, Cuba policies split Bush supporters

[Judi Lynn]

June 15, 2006, 10:22PM
Drilling, Cuba policies split Bush supporters
Oil companies want exemption from embargo


By JAY NEWTON-SMALL
Bloomberg News

High oil prices are driving a wedge between energy companies and the Cuban-American community, two pillars of support for President Bush and his fellow Republicans.

Companies, including Houston-based Marathon Oil Corp., are lobbying Congress to be allowed to bid for oil and natural gas deposits in Cuban waters. They are backed by Republican lawmakers bucking Bush by supporting legislation to exempt the companies from the 1962 trade embargo and a ban on drilling within 100 miles of U.S. shores.

The U.S. need for energy and the likelihood that foreign companies will rush in to drill justifies the exemption, advocates say. "Are we supposed to sit by and let China drill in our backyard?" asks Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., chairman of the Senate Energy Committee, a co-sponsor with 12 other lawmakers of legislation exempting the U.S. companies.

Cuban-American groups, meanwhile, say the legislation would just prop up the government of communist President Fidel Castro; if anything, they want the embargo toughened.
(snip/...)

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/business/3974137.html

[RagingInMiami]

1. This would be so perfect

To sit back and watch the republican's greed for oil overcome their insincere pandering to the Miami Cubans. If Bush didn't know the meaning of Catch-22 before, he should now.