"I have said it thrice: What I tell you three times is true."

--Lewis Carroll

So Slimy Norman Quimby took time off from chasing skirts and beating up on Laurie to lie about China drilling in Cuban territorial waters? He must be getting really desperate.

Any chance we can persuade him to start flying in small planes any time soon?

It seems to me we are ignoring the big question. Of course the fact question is important. But assume it is true. So what? If the argument is we need the oil, then let China drill far out and the world still gets the oil. Or are we saying just because China does something we should. If China finds a gazillion barrels somewhere , great. Or is this really another issue of trying to favor Exxon-Mobile etc. Like ANWAR? I do not care if the gas I use comes from China, Texas, Iraq, The rose garden, or GWB's nose. Neither does my car.

I just posted the following in the comments section under that article at the Mankato Free Press. Feel free to jump in folks. You're preaching to the choir here while assholes like Coleman are spreading a lie.

"It seems like a Republican a day keeps repeating the claim that the Chinese and/or Cubans are drilling for oil off the coast the Florida. Yesterday it was Rudy Guiliani. The day before John Sununu. Now we have Norm Coleman saying it. Republican house and senate candidates have repeated the mantra over and over again.

Well what's the truth? I did a little digging and here's what I found. In 2006 the NY Times and in 2007 the USA Today ran stories predicting the Chinese would be drilling for oil in Cuban waters by 2008. Their predictions were wrong. It hasn't happened.

In 2001 the Brazilian state oil company, Petrobras did spend $17 million looking for oil in Cuban waters and came up empty-handed. In 2004 Repsol YPF, the big Spanish oil and gas company, hired a Norwegian drilling platform, the Eirik Raude, at a cost around $200,000 a day to search for oil in Cuban waters, in a narrow sector of the Gulf of Mexico off the northwestern coast. The venture, established with Cubapetróleo, the government-owned oil company was about 18 miles off their coast about a mile down, 95 miles off the coast of Florida. Sadly for Cuba and Repsol YPF they didn't find any commercially viable deposits either. Canada's Sherritt OIl is the most active foreign company in Cuba with nine fields operating onshore and five exploration or appraisal blocs being drilled.

Daily output from the company's wells averages a modest 30,000 barrels a day (all onshore), down from about 43,000 in 2004.That's the extent of oil exploration in Cuba or off the coast of Florida so far as near as I can tell. Cuba has 59 or 60 lease blocks available in their waters and foreign oil companies have taken flyers on 16 but they aren't doing much is anything with them.

Cuba's landbased wells pump pretty heavy sour stuff. There's no reason to believe any oil offshore would be better quality and it's very expensive to find and pump.

Another minus is refining capacity. They have three old US refineries nationalized by Castro after the revolution and a Soviet one built in 1971. They can handle the little oil Cuba produces now but would have to expand to handle any new production. The closest other refineries are in St. Croix and Aruba. They are American owned and Cuban oil is off limits because of the embargo.

Cuba buys half it's oil from Venezuela and would really love to have American oil companies with the latest technology find oil for them so they could wean themselves off Chavez's. Again our embargo prevents that.

The US Geological Survey estimates that the energy field on Cuba's side of the coastal waters may have 4.6 billion barrels of oil and 9.8 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. That amounts to about 230 days of US oil usage based on the US Energy Information Agency's US figure of 20,687,000 barrels/day in 2007.

On the US side of the coastal waters all I can find are experts who say there probably isn't any motherload off FL, any finds worth pumping are further west in the Gulf closer to the US and Mexico than Cuba. Those areas also aren't two miles down and the oil is probably a lighter sweeter crude.

4.6 billion barrels - if it's there - isn't a huge field. It'd handsomely take care of Cuba's needs for quite some time but they wouldn't be able to export much to China or anywhere else. Too far down, in a hurricane alley, poor quality sulphurus oil, and building the infrastructure to handle it would be too costly. One of the big reasons no one bothers much with looking for oil there is because of the scarcity and cost of deep sea exploratory rigs as it is. In short there's better places to look for oil than off the coast of FL or Cuba. Everybody who checks this out knows that except Republicans.

If you want more info I have the complete post with links to the sited articles here:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/7/2/1543/23452/652/545495

Republicans please stop making stupid dishonest arguments. Our political discourse is dumb enough as it is.

According to my congressperson, Betty Sutton, drilling was considered, but Big Oil wouldn't go for increased environmental scrutiny. Not even the oilgarchs can have their cake and eat it too! A few years back, the Alaska Pipeline sprang a leak because, in a time of then-record profits (now known to consumers as the Good Old Days), routine maintenance was skipped. Any good reason why someone's hindquarters didn't get toasted over this?

Oil really isn't that fungible. A particular refinery is set up to refine oil with a particular "sweetness" (the amount of sulphur in the oil) and "weight" (the amount of paraffin in the oil). Extensive retrofitting is involved in switching a refinery around to refine a different oil.

Know how much Alaskan oil we refine? ZIP! Too much sulphur. It get piped onto ships and traded for oil we can use. A shipload of oil can change hands several times before its ultimate destination. Cash allowances are made to make up for trading less desirable oil for more desirable oil.

Ted Kennedy has withdrawn any opposition to wind farms in Mass. Sorry, try harder next time!!

Unfortunately, Obama has a base that is fearful of nuclear energy. I'm not one of those.

Does this mean that you have come up with an acceptable disposal method for nuclear waste? Or some methodology that produces no waste?

Maybe you just mean that you have faith that a means will be found, sort of like McCain's daydream about 2013 when all will be hugs and kisses in Iraq.

I propose that we store nuclear waste in your backyard for the meantime, especially if you're still in the baby-making business. If you're past that age, we could go for your grandchildren's back yard. We promise to put it in the safest containers we know about. No problem.