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