March 11, 2011
HAVANA (AFP) - Brazilian state-run enrgy giant Petrobras has dropped a search for oil in waters off Cuba after coming up dry there in 2008, a Brazilian government official said Thursday in Havana.
"It's now been decided. Petrobras is withdrawing. We regret this, but we have to work with reality," Marco Aurelio Garcia, foreign affairs advisor to Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, said at the end of a three-day visit to Cuba.
Brazil and Cuba said they would nonetheless pursue cooperation in building a facility making lubricating oil.
Petrobras, which is 48 percent in government hands, contracted its prospecting in block N-37 off Cuba to Cuban state outfit Cubapetroleos after an unsuccessful search in another block between 1998 and 2001.
The block was one of 59 in a prospecting zone of 112,000 square kilometers (43,200 square miles) in Cuban waters.
Twenty-one of the blocks have been licensed to foreign companies, including Spain's Repsol, Norway's Hydro, India's OVL, Venezuela's PDVSA, Vietnam's Petrovietnam, Malaysia' Petronas and Angola's Sonangol.
