( ) Lifting Oil Restrictions Checks a Forthcoming Wave of Cuban LNG Imports

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1AC- LNG Imports Module

( ) Lifting oil restrictions checks a forthcoming wave of Cuban LNG imports.

Benjamin-Alvarado ‘10

Jonathan Benjamin-Alvarado, PhD of Political Science, University of Nebraska, 2010, “Cuba’s Energy Future: Strategic Approaches to Cooperation,” a Brookings Publication – obtained as an ebook through MSU Electronic Resources – page 111-12

The authors of chapter 2, Jorge R. Piñón and Jonathan Benjamin-Alvarado, find that there are a number of key issues to consider regarding the productive capacity of Cuba’s oil and gas resources. First, Cuba has seen close to $2 billion of direct foreign investment since 1991 in its upstream oil and natural gas sector, with very good results. Crude oil liquids production reached a peak level of 65,531 barrels per day in 2003, up from 9,090 barrels per day in 1991. Since 2005 Cuba has seen its crude oil production level off at around 52,000 barrels per day. Second, Cuba’s realized crude oil value could improve substantially once the country is able to monetize its heavy oil production by means of its own future heavy oil conversion refinery processing capacity, or to market its crude oil to U.S. Gulf Coast refining companies. Third, Cuba’s onshore and coastal heavy oil production seems to have reached a plateau at around 52,000 barrels per day, but once Cupet has access to the services, technology, equipment, and capital available through independent U.S. oil and oil services and equipment companies (when the trade embargo is lifted or modified), Cuba’s heavy oil production potential could grow to an amount in excess of 75,000 barrels a day. Deficiencies in Cuba’s oil-refining sector— including outdated technology that is unable to process heavy crude— coupled with an environmentally sensitive tourist industry will force Cuba to consider developing an energy policy that relies heavily on clean-burning natural gas as its fuel of choice for power generation. Cuba’s future natural gas needs could be sourced as liquefied natural gas (LNG) from Trinidad and Tobago, as Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic currently do, or from future Venezuelan production. A regasification facility to receive Venezuela-sourced liquid natural gas is being planned for the southern coast port city of Cienfuegos by Venezuela’s PDVSA and Cupet. Two one-million-ton regasification trains are planned for 2012 at a cost of over $400 million. The natural gas is destined as fuel for that city’s thermoelectric power plant, local industry, and future petrochemical plants.

Increasing LNG imports causes accidents—outweighs everything

Hunter and Amory Lovins 2001 (analysts, lectures and consultants on energy, resource and security policy, Hunter Lovins has degrees in Law, Political Studies and Sociology and an honorary doctorate, and is a member of the California Bar. For six years she was assistant Director of the California Conservation project. Amory Lovins is a consultant experimental physicist, educated at Harvard and Oxford, who has published 23 books (many co-authored with Hunter) and several hundred papers. He has held various academic chairs, received six honorary doctorates, served on the US Department of Energy's senior advisory board, and consulted (often with Hunter) for scores of energy companies, manufacturing firms, governments and international organisations. The Lovineses have received numerous awards for their work. Brittle Power : Energy Strategy for National Security – Rocky Mountain Institute --http://www.rmi.org/images/other/S-BrPwr-Parts123.pdf-- also available @http://www.transitcommerce.com/Harpswell/weeks.asp)

Disasters Waiting to Happen :Liquified Natural GasNatural gas can be sent by pipeline over long distances. For a price, it can be piped from North Sea platforms to the British mainland, from Algeria to Italy, or from Siberia to Western Europe. Butpipelines are not a feasible way to send gas across major oceans—for example, from the Mideast or Indonesia to the United States. A high-technology way to transport natural gas overseas has, however, been developed in the past few decades, using the techniques of cryogenics—the science of extremely low temperatures.In this method, a sort of giant refrigerator, costing more than a billion dollars, chills a vast amount of gas until it condenses into a colorless, odorless liquid at a temperature of two hundred sixty degrees Fahrenheit below zero. This liquefied natural gas (LNG) has a volume six hundred twenty times smaller than the original gas. The intensely cold LNG is then transported at approximately atmospheric pressure in special, heavily insulated cryogenic tankers—the costliest non-military seagoing vessels in the world—to a marine terminal, where it is stored in insulated tanks. When needed, it can then be piped to an adjacent gasification plant—nearly as complex and costly as the liquefaction plant—where it is boiled back into gas and distributed to customers by pipeline just like wellhead gas. Approximately sixty smaller plants in North America also liquefy and store domestic natural gas as a convenient way of increasing their storage capacity for winter peak demands which could otherwise exceed the capacity of trunk pipeline supplying the area. This type of local storage to augment peak supplies is called "peak-shaving." Such plants can be sited anywhere gas is available in bulk; they need have nothing to do with marine LNG tankers. LNG is less than half as dense as water, so a cubic meter of LNG (the usual unit of measure) weighs just over half a ton.1LNG contains about thirty percent less energy per cubic meter than oil, but is potentially far more hazardous.2 Burning oil cannot spread very far on land or water,but a cubic meter ofspilled LNG rapidly boils into about six hundred twenty cubic meters of purenatural gas, which in turn mixes with surrounding air.Mixtures of between about five and fourteen percent natural gas in air are flammable. Thusa singlecubic meter of spilled LNG can make up to twelve thousand four hundredcubic meters of flammable gas-air mixture.A single modern LNG tanker typicallyholds one hundred twenty-five thousand cubic meters of LNG, equivalentto twenty-seven hundred million cubic feet of natural gas. That gas canform between about twenty and fifty billion cubic feet of flammable gas-airmixture—several hundred times the volume of the Great Pyramidof Cheops.About nine percent of such a tankerload of LNG will probably, if spilled onto water, boil to gas in about five minutes.3 (It does not matter how cold the water is; it will be at least two hundred twenty-eight Fahrenheit degrees hotter than the LNG, which it will therefore cause to boil violently.) The resulting gas, however, will be so cold that it will still be denser than air. It will therefore flow in a cloud or plume along the surface until it reaches an ignition source. Such a plume might extend at least three miles downwind from a large tanker spill within ten to twenty minutes.4 It might ultimately reach much farther—perhaps six to twelve miles.5 If not ignited, the gas is asphyxiating. If ignited, it will burn to completion with a turbulent diffusion flame reminiscent of the 1937 Hindenberg disaster but about a hundred times as big. Such a fireball would burn everything within it, and by its radiant heat would cause third-degree burns and start fires a mile or two away.6 An LNG fireball can blow through a city, creating “a very large number of ignitions and explosions across a wide area.No present or foreseeable equipment can put out avery large [LNG]... fire.”7The energy content of a single standard LNG tanker(one hundred twenty-five thousand cubic meters)is equivalent toseven-tenths of a megaton of TNT, or aboutfifty-five Hiroshima bombs.

Extension—Cuban Oil Cuts LNG Imports

Cuba oil displaces LNG—trades off

Jorge Pinon 10/22/2010 (Senior Research Fellow, Florida International University, "Cuba's Energy Future: Strategic Approaches to Cooperation" www.brookings.edu/~/media/events/2010/10/22%20cuba%20energy/20101022_cuba_energy.pdf)

So for the future of Cuba, if Cuba is able to build those two new 300,000 barrels a day of heavy oil cracking capacity -- even if Cuba doesn’t find oil, it’ll be a very big potential deal. I want to briefly just talk about energy for a minute. I hope it’s not an accident that an oil guy is sitting next to the environmental guy, but within the fossil fuels, there is no question that natural gas is the least contaminated -- even though we want to get above fossil fuels. I understand that. But within the fossil fuels, natural gas is the fuel of the future. And Cuba’s program is a two million ton a year train in Cienfuegos. Part of that is going to be to produce hydrogen for the hydrocrackers of the new refinery, some petrochemical projects and then natural gas for the Carlos Manuel de Cespedes plant in Cienfuegos. If we can convert Cuba’s thermoelectric capacity today to LNG, it’s going to be fantastic -- especially from air contamination and air pollution. Remember that the fuel that Cuba is burning today is three percent high sulfur fuel. So from an environmental point of view, turning Cuba’s electric sector to LNG will be fantastic. Plenty of energy in Trinidad and Tobago. Plenty of energy is going to be coming out of Venezuela. Plus, by the way, if Cuba finds oil, that would allow Cuba then to export more oil because that oil that would have gone to the power sector is oil that now they can export because it’s going to be replaced by LNG. Last comment. You talk about black gold.

Extension—Ending Embargo Cuts LNG Imports

Ending embargo opens Cuban market and develops its economy—no longer as dependent on T&T imports

George Alleyne 11/28/2012 (Writer for the Trinidad and Tobago Newsday, "Is Cuba embargo end near?" www.newsday.co.tt/commentary/0,169863.html)

Trinidad and Tobago has in the past enjoyed a favourable balance of trade with Cuba, with at one stage its exports to Cuba being 30 times as great as its imports from the Spanish speaking country. Some of the principal Trinidad and Tobago exports to Cuba have in the past embraced anhydrous ammonia, bars and rods of non-alloy steel, gas oil, other petroleum products, liquefied butane and liquefied propane. But even as this columnist has for several years advocated the lifting of the United States embargo on Cuba and today urges President Obama to relegate the embargo to the dustbin of history I recognise that the anticipated increase in Cuba’s tourism industry, will result in a marked drop in overnight and short and medium term visitor arrivals re Trinidad and Tobago and other Caricom Member States. This will mean a reduction in revenue from tourism. Nonetheless, what is important is the broader picture. Cuba after any lifting of the US embargo, if only because of the emphasis placed by its post Fulgencio Batista leaders, is almost certain to resist attempts to have Cuba as a source for primary products. Indeed, Cuba has a more bankable work force than any other other Caribbean island nation save for Trinidad and Tobago. Because of its proximity to the United States, however, and the covert interest of many Americans and the open interest demonstrated by European investors, a lifting of the US embargo will see a close to rapid development of its economy, limited only by the ongoing world recession.

Extension—Cuba Dependent on T&T

Cuba’s oil drilling failures make it dependent on Trinidad and Tobago

David McFadden 3/31/2013 (Writer for the Associated Press, "Caribbean nations search for oil and spill fears" bigstory.ap.org/article/caribbean-nations-search-oil-amid-spill-fears-0)

So far, the twin-island nation of Trinidad & Tobago is the only major hydrocarbons producer in the Caribbean, and its waters are crowded with offshore platforms. The country sits just about seven miles (11 kilometers) off the coast of Venezuela, which has the world's largest proven oil reserves. It's pushing hard into deep-water drilling and has signed production-sharing contracts with British oil company BP for new exploration blocks. A growing number of other Caribbean nations are also authorizing or at least aggressively pursuing offshore exploration. The Bahamas recently announced it would try offshore exploratory drilling and said it should have enough information by late 2014 to decide whether it can move forward with production. A voter referendum would first have to decide the matter. Bahamas Petroleum Company CEO Simon Potter said a rig will drill to subsea depths of roughly 22,000 feet (6,705 meters) in some 1,600 feet (488 meters) of water adjacent to Cuba's offshore territory. Barbados and Jamaica have also been seeking well exploration in their seas, while the Anglo-Dutch group Shell announced in December it was preparing to sink its third offshore well in nearby French Guiana, an overseas French department, with other companies also exploring in deep waters there. "What once was a trickle is fast becoming a stream in the Caribbean, with new announcements of expanding deep-water exploration lease offerings and drilling permits being issued," said Lee Hunt, a Houston-based consultant who retired last year as the longtime president of the International Association of Drilling Contractors. The push for exploration has been fed partly by worries that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's nearly two-year-long cancer fight and March 5 death would affect a Venezuelan aid program called PetroCaribe that sells petroleum to 17 Caribbean countries on preferential terms. PetroCaribe provided $14 billion worth of Venezuelan oil to the region last year, with Cuba being the principal beneficiary. Chavez's successor Nicolas Maduro hasn't said he would stop the aid, but his challenger in April 14 elections, Gov. Henrique Capriles, has pledged to cut off subsidized oil to Cuba and reevaluate the PetroCaribe program if elected. Keeping the oil flowing is crucial. Caribbean countries generate nearly all their power from imported oil although the region is blessed with solar, wind and other alternative energy opportunities. Nonetheless, many people across the region fear their famed clear water, fringing reefs and white-sand beaches could end up a casualty to any future oil boom, threatening the tourism bonanza that many countries already depend on. Even with the possibility of a windfall still distant, regional officials have begun to discuss how they would cooperate in the event of a major accident, such as the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. "First, we have to prevent any kind of spill. And second, if something happens, we have to make sure everyone is working together," said Ernesto Soberon Guzman, the Cuban ambassador to the Bahamas, during regional talks about oil spill preparedness in the Bahamaian capital of Nassau this month. Ocean currents practically assure that a big spill in one Caribbean nation would significantly affect neighbors, possibly even the U.S. East Coast. Many Gulf communities are still recovering from the Deepwater Horizon accident, the country's largest offshore oil spill. "If oil rises to the surface and gets to the surface currents, it would start flowing towards our waters and our shores," said Capt. John Slaughter, chief of planning, readiness, and response for the U.S. Coast Guard's Miami-based 7th District. "We're going to take every action we can to prevent that from happening." Adding to complications, the overall Caribbean region, with the exception of Trinidad & Tobago, is still an uncertain frontier for offshore oil and gas, said Jorge R. Pinon, a Latin America and Caribbean energy expert at the University of Texas in Austin. Cuba, for example, authorized exploratory drilling for ultra-deep deposits estimated to hold 5 billion to 9 billion barrels of oil, but its dreams were put on hold last year when three initial exploratory wells were unsuccessful and the massive platform that drilled them sailed away, with no scheduled return date.