23-02-01 Energy-poor Cuba's hopes that a wildcat well being drilled by foreign firms off the north-central coast will be a gusher are dimming, with drilling going deeper and dragging on longer than expected. The risky project is being carried out by Petrobras, in conjunction with Canada's Sherritt International.
"They passed 3,800 metres, and plan to go as far as around 4,000 metres. So far they have come up dry," said a Cuban oil industry source. "We plan to keep drilling for a few more weeks," said Demarco Jorge Epifanio, the head of Petrobras' Cuban subsidiary Brasoil Cuba.
Petrobras has a 60 % interest, and Sherritt International a 40 % interest, in the $ 15 mm offshore well, 32 km north of Cuba's central Ciego de Avila province. The Cuban state would form a joint venture with the two companies if oil were discovered.
Last September, Epifanio said plans called for using the small coral key Cayo Felipe as a solid base above water from which to drill a directional well 1.6 km to the northwest to a depth of 3,400 metres, with work concluding by early January. Epifanio said at the time, "This really is a wildcat well. It is a high-risk bid -- we estimate the probability of success at below 15 %."

Nevertheless, Cuban officials have repeatedly expressed their optimism that a major oil discovery was at hand, presumably referring to the well, called Felipe 1X. Petrobras is the most important company to explore for oil in Cuba since the French firm Total drilled two dry wells in the early 1990s, than gave up exploration activities. Communist-run Cuba found itself in a desperate situation after the collapse of European communism left the Caribbean island with virtually no oil or hard currency.
Since then, oil firms from Canada, Britain, France and Sweden have been helping Cuba develop its existing wells and search for new reserves, though they have come up dry or with sulphur-laden heavy crude. Cuba's oil output has increased more than 400 % over the last decade, to around 55,000 bpd, a third of the cash-short Caribbean island's minimum oil consumption.
Over 90 % of the crude comes from fields along the island's northwest coast, 50-150 km east of Havana. Petrobras signed an agreement with state-owned Cuba Petroleo in 1998 to explore a 1,000 sq km area called block L located off the north-central coast, 450 km east of Havana.

Seismic studies identified a promising area that company officials said could contain possible reserves of 700 mm barrels of oil of around 25 degrees API gravity. The Brazilian company's contract with Cuba foresaw the drilling of up to three exploration wells, but Epifanio said last September that the other wells would depend on the outcome of Felipe 1X, which should be known by March.