The Oil Off Cuba: Washington and Havana Dance at Arms Length Over Spill Prevention

On Christmas Eve, a massive, Chinese-made maritime oil rig, the Scarabeo 9, arrived at Trinidad and Tobago for inspection. The Spanish oil company Repsol YPF, which keeps regional headquarters in Trinidad, ferried it to the Caribbean to perform deep-ocean drilling off Cuba -- whose communist government believes as much as 20 billion barrels of crude may lie near the island's northwest coast. But ...