Cuba Offshore Drilling Rig Spotted on Radar - Small Slick Reported

The big semisubmersible drill rig, built in China and now drilling a deepwater oil well for the Spanish company Repsol in the Florida Straits off Cuba (hey, it is a global industry), has finally made an appearance on a radar satellite image. This Envisat ASAR image, shot at 11:43 pm local time on March 30, shows a trio of very bright spots about 17 miles north-northwest of Havana.  We think the largest of these spots, with an interesting cross-shaped "ringing" pattern often seen on radar images of big, boxy metal objects, is the Scarabeo-9 rig.  The other two spots may be crew vessels or workboats:

Image courtesy European Space Agency.

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Drilling to Begin Soon in Deep Water Off Cuba

Say hello to my little friend:  Scarabeo-9 arrives to begin deepwater drilling off Cuba.  Photo courtesy Shipspotting.com.

The Scarabeo-9, a big semisubmersible drill rig owned by Italian company ENI, just built in China, and currently under contract to the Spanish oil company Repsol, has arrived in the Florida Straits off the north coast of Cuba to begin exploratory oil drilling.  The rig will begin its work in exploration block N27 (see map after the jump) just 90 miles from Key West, in water about 6,500' deep.  That's 1,500' deeper than the site of the BP / Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf in 2010. 

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