WASHINGTON, Nov. 2 (UPI) -- Washington's silence on Spanish energy company Repsol's plans to explore for oil off the coast of Cuba is unacceptable, House leaders said in a letter.
Spanish energy company Repsol said it plans to drill exploration wells in Cuban waters of the Gulf of Mexico this year.
Bipartisan leaders from the House of Representatives, all of whom are of Cuban descent, criticized U.S. President Barack Obama for not standing against Repsol's plans.
"The Obama administration's lack of action and urgency to prevent Repsol, a Spanish state-owned enterprise, from partnering with a state sponsor of terrorism in order to drill an exploratory oil well just 90 miles off the coast of the U.S. is unacceptable," the letter read.
The letter adds that Repsol, and therefore the Obama administration, might be breaking the law through the activity in Cuba, the subject of a long-standing U.S. economic embargo.
Cuba is looking into cutting the amount of oil it imports from Venezuela through development of offshore reserves. The U.S. Energy Information Administration estimates that, as of 2009, Cuba had less than 1 billion barrels of oil reserves.
Repsol announced in September that it was named the most transparent oil company in the world by Dow Jones sustainability indexes.
U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, a harsh critic of Cuba, was a co-signer of the letter to Obama.
