High Hope in Cuba

Cuba is rich in sugar, tobacco and bandleaders. But it lacks the oil needed to industrialize its economy. Up to this year, only 33 wells have been drilled on the island, and production is still only a drop in the oilcan compared with Cuba's daily consumption of 50,000 bbls.

Since the government opened the door to foreign exploration capital this summer, U.S. oilmen have been filling Havana with ten-gallon hats and billion-barrel talk. Last week a band of ten Latin American and U.S. businessmen flew into Havana to promote the development of the country's oil resources. Among the officers of the newly chartered Cuban-Colombian Petroleum Co.: Board Chairman Joseph W. Frazer. once of Kaiser-Frazer Corp., who now heads a uranium company; Director John A. Roosevelt, youngest of F.D.R'.s four sons, whose business ventures have ranged from department stores to home permanent waves; President Octavio Reyes Espin-dola, onetime Mexican Ambassador to Cuba and a close associate of Cuban President Fulgencio Batista.

The company has $2,500,000 in capital, much of it raised from Cuban investors, and a Cuban government loan of $150,000 for drilling. Under the terms of last month's decree designed to stimulate development of the island's oil resources, the loan need not be repaid unless the prospectors strike oil. With close to a million acres under lease in the central Jatibonico Basin, where a wildcat syndicate last May opened up the country's first sizable oilfield, Cuban-Colombian agreed last week to drill six 4,000-ft. wells when geological surveys are completed.

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