03-11-2008, 05:21 AM
Adele Edisen Wrote:Paul and Others,
For whatever it's worth, I remember sales of shares being sold in New Orleans to a company which claimed oil had been found in Cuba - on land or in the sea, I don't know. I saw the stock certificates that belonged to someone I knew who had purchased shares. This was while Castro was fighting the Batista forces before he gained charge of Cuba in 1959.
Wasn't George H.W. Bush and his Zapata Oil (exploration?) Company operating in the Caribbean at the time (the late 1950s), possibly near Cuba?
Adele
Good point Adele. I don't know why I don't think of Cuba when I think of oil.
"Zapata Off-Shore concentrated its business in the Caribbean, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Central American coast in the late 1950s and early 1960s, according to Nicolas King's George Bush: A Biography. The US government began to auction off mineral rights to these areas in 1954. Drilling contracts in 1958 with the seven large US oil producers included wells 40 miles north of Isabela, Cuba (131 miles south of Miami), near the island Cay Sal. (Fidel Castro overthrew Cuba's Batista government in July 1959.) Zapata also won a contract with Kuwait. Bush was joined in Zapata by a fellow Yale Skull and Bones member, Robert Gow, in 1962. Zapata Offshore had four oil-drilling rigs operational by 1963: Scorpion (1956), Vinegaroon (1957), Sidewinder, and (in the Persian Gulf) Nola III.
By 1964, Zapata Off-Shore had a number of subsidiaries, including: Seacat-Zapata Offshore Company (Persia Gulf), Zapata de Mexico, Zapata International Corporation, Zapata Mining Corporation, Zavala Oil Company, Zapata Overseas Corporation, and a 41% share of Amata Gas Corporation."
http://www.answers.com/topic/zapata-corporation