In late January, Spain's Repsol began drilling in the Northbelt Thrust, a stretch of the offshore Caribbean that may contain 6 billion barrels of oil. Between now and next month, Repsol will learn whether its part of the Thrust has commercial oil. But the company will be judicious with any news (pictured above, Repsol rig), uncertain whether it will be greeted with the hoots and cheers with which the industry typically greets word of a fresh discovery.

The Northbelt Thrust falls into a curious category on the global oil patch. Like dark matter in the universe, it is a blank spot, one of a few places with big proven and potential reserves that are wholly ignored in official forecasts. For it is offshore from Cuba, a political pariah in the U.S.

Wall Street, major commercial consultant firms, and government energy agencies appear to feel uncomfortable lending serious public attention to Cuba's potential for big strikes this year, as I write at EnergyWire. For differing reasons, Venezuela, too, is part of this alter-reality.

I asked a senior Wall Street contact why his firm's reporting excludes Cuba and Venezuela. "They have no oil supply growth," he replied, which at the moment technically is true -- yet may turn out not to be in a matter of weeks in the case of Cuba.

Jorge Pinon, who worked for years as an Amoco executive in Latin America, told me that companies and firms are simply heeding U.S. political reality, starting with the role of Cuban-American Ileana Ros-Lehtinen as a leader of the Republican majority in the House of Representatives. He said:

When you have a Cuban delegation in Congress that is very powerful, and among them is the chairman of the House Foreign Relations Committee, you have to be extremely careful how you play Cuba.

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