A tanker truck leaves the oil refinery Puerto Escondido in Cuba on Saturday. - Reuters

SANTA CRUZ DEL NORTE, Cuba (AP):

Cuban officials courted foreign geologists and petroleum experts during a tour of the island's oil and natural gas works on Saturday in hopes of sparking more international interest in investment.

Attendees at an earth sciences conference were taken by state oil company Cuba Petroleos to several extraction facilities in a deposit-rich strip along the northern part of the island, including the US$200 million Cuban-Canadian ENERGAS natural gas plant in an area called Boca de Jaruco.

"The geology we find here is very similar to that of eastern Mexico, of the southern United States," said Rafael Tenreyro, a drilling specialist with the state oil company, known as Cupet.

About 95 per cent of Cuba's daily production of 85,000 barrels of petroleum and 120 million cubic feet (3.4 million cubic metres) of natural gas comes from the region along the north coast.

Cuban officials are betting on even richer deposits offshore, where foreign companies are already engaged in exploratory drilling in partnership with the Government.

Tip of the iceberg

"We have just recently started and we are seeing the tip of the iceberg," Tenreyro said. "Our intent is to continue to explore and discover great oil fields."

The United States Geological Survey estimates that the North Cuba Basin holds 4.6 billion to 9.3 billion barrels of crude, along with 9.8 trillion cubic feet (280 billion cubic metres) to 21.8 trillion cubic feet (620 billion cubic metres) of natural gas.

Since 2003, companies from Norway, India, Malaysia, Spain and Venezuela have reserved blocks for petroleum exploration under production-sharing agreements with Cuba.

U.S. oil firms, however, are shut out by Washington's 45-year-old trade embargo on the island because of its communist stance.

Earlier this month, U.S. Sens. Larry Craig, a Republican from Idaho, and Byron Dorgan, a Democrat from North Dakota, introduced a measure containing a provision to let U.S. oil and natural gas companies work in Cuban waters.

But another Senate bill already introduced would seek to punish companies that invest in Cuban drilling near Florida. Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Cuban-born Republican who represents Florida, has pledged a similar measure in the House.