| Startlingly enough, it looks as if the time will soon | | | | all of our energy needs for about 18 years, or long |
| arrive when the USA will have to play catch-up with | | | | enough for all the leaders in the Middle East who we |
| Cuba in oil exploration. The diminutive and destitute | | | | aren't getting along with these days to go the way |
| communist enclave that serves as Fidel Castro's | | | | of leaders everywhere who, we determine, are |
| personal cigar plantation now realizes that it has | | | | irredeemably misguided. |
| enough oil reserves under its coastal waters to prop | | | | Naturally, conservation societies have been galvanized |
| up its no-go economy for decades and, incapable of | | | | into opposition by the mere prospect of an oil bit |
| assembling the capacity to out the oil itself, the island | | | | chomping into the emerald waters of our abundantly |
| nation has begun to license drilling rights to other | | | | fishy coastlines in search of the liquid treasure below |
| countries, including China, the prospect of which | | | | the reefs. |
| alarms us, and Spain, the idea of which invites us to | | | | As the debate bubbles on, we can only consider a |
| think of tapas. | | | | worst-case, best-case scenario. Worst case: we do |
| In wisdom wrought from its neediness, the | | | | nothing while foreign companies who don't exactly |
| resourceful islet has also offered to license American | | | | have the most reverential reputations in ecological |
| oil companies. | | | | propriety drill away and, as time allows, send oil spills |
| Expectedly enough, the very prospect of Cuba | | | | slithering onto our beaches. Best case: we race to |
| scooping oil out of the ocean floor while America has | | | | catch up with Cuba and maybe even preempt the |
| outlawed it for decades has enkindled hot debate in | | | | ill-advised entanglements that might otherwise drill |
| Congress about the present wisdom of our | | | | down into our hemisphere. |
| self-imposed interdiction. The debate has rapidly | | | | Since we're actually talking about drilling in our own |
| blossomed into a gusher partly because America has | | | | backyard pond, we might also, one hopes, do it in |
| even more proven oil reserves in its coastal waters, | | | | ways that are less likely to lead to the shameful oil |
| no doubt principally because it has even more coastal | | | | blights that fill us all with remorse and send fish and |
| waters. | | | | fowl off to tarry death - derelictions that strange |
| Persuasively enough in these oil-dear times, there | | | | countries in a strange land might less assiduously labor |
| seems to be enough of the black gold there to meet | | | | to avoid. |