HUFFINGTONPOST: “Prevention of Cuba's Drilling Best Serves U.S. Interests”, por Mauricio Claver-Carone (Inglés)

Reasonable minds should be able to agree that it's not in the United States' national interest to assist anti-American dictators in searching for oil to support their repressive, failing regimes. It won't drop the price of gas in the United States or do anything to enhance our "energy independence."
Yet American assistance to make oil-drilling in the Florida Straits profitable is exactly what Cuba's dictators Fidel and Raul Castro hope to gain as they use the threat of oil-drilling to maneuver the Obama Administration into once again unilaterally lifting U.S. sanctions on Cuba.
Cuba's search for leverage over the United States is not new. The Castro brothers have been using offshore-drilling as a lure to extract economic and political concessions from various nations since 1991, when the collapse of the Soviet Union ended that country's hefty subsidies to Cuba.

Irrespective of whether the United States lifts sanctions or tries again to engage Cuba, the anti-American nature of the Castros' regime is unlikely to provide necessary safeguards for off-shore drilling.