Under pressure from a Congressional subcommittee meeting in South Florida, a representative from the U.S. Department of Interior changed his story about the potential safety of the Scarabeo 9 oil rig preparing to drill off Cuba.

 

Lars Herbst, a regional director with Interior's Bureau of Safety and Environment Enforcement, told the panel there were issues with welding and wiring on safety equipment that would render the rig substandard until fixed despite repeated assurances that inspectors found the rig to meet U.S and international safety standards.

 

"The wiring was not completed on several of the safety systems," Herbst said. "Those are the things we would have done follow up. It was not thorough enough to actually allow it to drill in the U.S."

 

Miami lawmakers have charged all along, the inspection of the Chinese-built, Italian-owned rig leased by the Spanish company Repsol,  16 miles off Cuba and ready to drill this spring, was  less about safety and more about diplomacy.

 

"How can we inflict maximum pain on Repsol?" asked Miami Congressman David Rivera. "If something happens on a rig that we ourselves said would have been certified for U.S. operations?"

 

The answer seems murky, as the U.S. has no jurisdiction over internationally-owned oil rigs in Cuban waters.

 

Two South Florida lawmakers, Rivera and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, have introduced bills that would sanction companies in such cases.

 

At the subcommittee hearing scientists used maps of the Loop Current, Florida Current and the Gulfstream Current to show how oil from a spill off Cuba's north coast could reach Florida's east coast in 10 to 20 days.

 

"The significance of these strong currents is they can move oil quickly, potentially 70 to 80 nautical miles in a 24 hour period," said Debbie Payton, Chief of the Emergency Response Division at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. "That's much faster than the 100 spills we respond to each year," she said.