OREANDA-NEWS. April 15, 2015. The historic meeting Saturday between President Barack Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro during the Summit of the Americas in Panama may be a strong signal that over 50 years of trade restrictions will soon be eased, but don’t expect US oil and gas operators on or offshore the island nation anytime soon.

Limited success by foreign oil firms in the past and state control rule that Cuba’s government is likely to keep in place even after the longstanding trade embargo might be dropped will likely stop any US investment in Cuba’s oil and gas sector before it starts.

According to a recent US Geological Survey report, unsuccessful deepwater drilling efforts, limited foreign investments and a lack of progress in oil and gas infrastructure projects have long stymied Cuba’s energy sector.

The report, which tracks trends in Cuba’s mining and petroleum industries, claims that Cuba’s current crude oil and associated natural gas production from onshore and shallow water coastal reservoirs is about 50,000 b/d of liquids and about 20,000 b/d of oil equivalent of natural gas.

Cuba has total undiscovered technically recoverable reserves of 4.6 billion barrels of crude oil, 9.8 Tcf of natural gas and 900 million barrels of natural gas liquids, according to 2004 estimates released by USGS.

In November, Cuba’s Ministry of Foreign Trade and Investment offered up joint ventures in petroleum extraction from both onshore and offshore blocks, but has stressed that Cuba will remain a state-driven economy and that most foreign ventures will have majority Cuban ownership.

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Roughly one-third of Cuba’s domestic petroleum is met by onshore and near-offshore production of extra heavy crude oil, which takes place mainly east of Havana at three facilities operated by Canada’s Sherritt International, according to the report.

Venezuelan imports have accounted for the other two-thirds of Cuba’s petroleum demand since 2007, but overall foreign investment in Cuba’s oil and gas sector has been limited, the report states.

Deepwater drilling efforts by Repsol of Spain and JSC Zarubezhneft of Russia resulted in no discoveries of commercial quantities of oil and gas.

In addition, a bid China won in 2010 to build a refinery and upgrade a crude oil import terminal has yet to progress, while another pipeline connecting the Cienfuegos refinery to Matanzas production fields has not been operational since initial performance tests took place in 1991, the USGS report states.

In December, Obama announced that the US will begin discussions to restore diplomatic relations with Cuba and move to normalize relations over the longer term. But the embargo remains in place and private and public investment in mineral production remains prohibited, USGS noted.

“We’ll continue to work toward reestablishing diplomatic relations, reopening embassies in Havana and Washington, and encouraging greater contacts and commerce and exchanges between our citizens,” Obama said Saturday during a news conference at the Summit of the Americas in Panama.

The US is expected to first decide whether to remove Cuba from a list of state sponsors of terrorism before moving on other efforts.