Havana/The hopes of the Cuban Government in the new oil prospecting in Australia’s Melbana have faded. The company, authorized since 2015 by the regime to carry out exploration in search of oil, announced this Wednesday that the results of the tests in the new Amistad-2 well showed “disappointing” results, a bucket of cold water in an area that promised much more, according to Cuban authorities.
Andrew Purcell, executive president of Melbana, has reported in a statement that the frustration is even greater because “the well was in an area with the highest known concentration of oil.” However, he added that these things can happen “during the initial stage of evaluation and development of new oil fields.”
The note states that the quality of the reservoir is good and the oil saturation “reasonable.” In addition, it stands out that the drilling pace was faster than expected, advancing to a greater depth than expected – 2,000 meters, compared to the 1,125 set as a target. Although this well is located only “850 meters southwest and 200 meters upstream” of Alameda-2, there is no connection between them.
This remains the only fruitful deposit found in Cuba, but its yields do not justify the investment either. Just 33,000 barrels stored as a result of five years of work seems like a very meager amount. For now, in any case, the company officially persists in continuing forward.
Since Angola’s state oil company, Sonangol, began operations in 2020, Melbana has only a 30% stake.
Melbana says the new data has led to the decision to continue drilling Amistad-11 (and not 3, as planned), while Amistad-1 production operations “have been temporarily suspended to prepare for drilling this well, should the joint operation approve this measure.”
The Australian company has been stating for years that there are multimillion-dollar reserves in the Varadero oil field, where it has authorization to explore what it calls Block 9: 2,344 square kilometers of promises that do not translate into anything. Since Angola’s state oil company, Sonangol, began operations in 2020, Melbana has only a 30% stake. The rest belongs to the African company, which has assumed 85% of the exploration and drilling costs in return.
The University of Texas researcher Jorge Piñón has not stopped expressing his doubts about the unique alliance between Melbana, an Australian company with little experience in the sector, and Cupet, which more than 30 years ago found the deposit, but did not find oil after drilling a countless number of exploratory wells.
In December 2024Purcell announced that Melbana planned to export Cuban crude oil, a decision that caused astonishment in the midst of the energy crisis in Cuba, which invests billions – which it does not have – in the acquisition of fuel. Months later, already in May, the shipment of a shipment of 250,000 barrels was scheduled for June, the company said then, which only a month later had to retract it and suspend it, hiding behind electricity and port problems that had nothing to do with the decision, actually attributable to the poor results of the exploration that had not yet been made public.
Now, however, it insists on resuming the operation before the end of the year, since it considers the obstacles that supposedly prevented it normalized.
Several experts have expressed their surprise at the excessive optimism of the Cuban authorities
“These conditions have largely normalized and work has resumed for a first test export before the end of the year, when there is sufficient volume of oil in storage to fill a larger capacity vessel,” the statement said.
Over the last decade, several experts have expressed their surprise at the excessive optimism of the Cuban authorities despite Melbana’s repeated failures in its efforts to drill without obtaining results that justified it. The perplexity was even greater when it was learned that the representative of the Australian company on the Island was the former director of Cupet Exploration, Rafael Tenreyro, who had not found oil in that block during his years in the state company, before entering the service of Melbana.
What confidential information did the Australians have that convinced them to invest in that expensive operation in Cuba and announce less than a year ago that they had found light oil – something unusual on the Island – and that they had obtained authorization from the Government to export it – something even more unusual -? Suspicion is growing that the company has been deceived and the consequences are in the losses recorded by Melbana starting in September of last year and the collapse of its shares on the stock market.
