Haiti might be sitting on lake of oil.

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Recently, someone mention on this website that there was an oil reserve in Haiti.

I didn't want to believe it at first so I did some research.

I came across a few blogs that said the same thing but I still didn't believe it. Now today I just this article on Yahoo news that clearly says Haiti might be sitting on a reservoir of oil and gas.

COULD THIS BE WHY THE US AND THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY ALL OF A SUDDEN SEEMS MOST DEVOTED TO HAITI.

Here is the article the part about the oil and gas is half way to the end.

Jan. 27 (Bloomberg) -- The number of U.S. soldiers, sailors and airmen in Haiti rose to more than 15,400, a force Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said is needed to deliver aid to the country devastated by an earthquake two weeks ago.

The U.S. has more than 4,700 "boots on the ground," including 3,000 soldiers from the Army's 82nd Airborne division, and another 10,700 service people on ships off Haiti, Lt. Gen. P.K. Keen, commander of the U.S. military's operations in Haiti, said yesterday.

The military is helping build a 5,000-bed post- surgical hospital for Haitians recovering from injuries, he said.

In Washington, Clinton responded to critics of the U.S. military's role in bringing relief to Haiti after a magnitude 7.0 earthquake killed at least 125,000 people in the Western Hemisphere's poorest nation, destroyed a third of the island's capital, Port-au-Prince, and left as many as 3 million people without food, water or sanitation.

"I deeply resent those who attack our country, the generosity of our people and the leadership of our president in trying to respond to historically disastrous conditions after the earthquake," Clinton told a group of State Department employees.

"Some of the international press either misunderstood or deliberately misconstrued what was a civilian and military response, both of them necessary in order to be able to deliver aid to the Haitians who desperately needed it," Clinton said.

Venezuela Boycott

Venezuela, Nicaragua and Bolivia boycotted a meeting of donors to Haiti in Montreal to protest the U.S. military's presence in the Caribbean, the German news service Deutsche Presse Agentur reported.

Former Cuban President Fidel Castro wrote Jan. 25 in the official Cuban newspaper Granma that U.S. troops have "occupied" Haiti, and said the transport of U.S. soldiers prevented several countries from bringing doctors and medical supplies to aid Haiti.

"Send doctors, not soldiers," Castro wrote.

"The U.S. government is taking advantage of a humanitarian tragedy to militarily take over Haiti," Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said Jan. 20.

A French cabinet official, Alain Joyandet, said Jan. 19 in Brussels that the role of the U.S. in Haiti should be clarified.

"It's about helping Haiti, not occupying Haiti," Joyandet said in an interview with French radio station Europe 1.

As foreign aid groups and Haitian agencies build up their capacity to deliver food, water, shelter and health care, the U.S. military will pull back, Keen said.

'Emergency Relief'

"Right now our focus is on providing just emergency relief that is so badly needed," he said. "We will see the number of troops rise and fall based upon the conditions on the ground."

An additional 5,000 support troops, with heavy construction equipment to clear debris and rebuild roads and buildings, will arrive this week, Keen said.

U.S. troops delivering aid to Haitians have had "extremely positive feedback from all of those that we reach out and touched," Keen said.

About 1 million people are homeless and tens of thousands are "crowded together" and living under plastic sheets, Dr. Tom Sizemore, of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, said on a teleconference with reporters yesterday.

Five of Haiti's eight hospitals were destroyed in the Earthquake the United Nations said earlier this month, and Keen said that field hospitals from nine nations are now working.

A U.S. hospital ship, the USNS Comfort, has taken 387 patients aboard, and medical envoys say needs are changing from acute surgery to dealing with infections, rehabilitation and staving off infectious diseases that can fester in the tent cities springing up in the capital.

Trapped Bodies

Bodies trapped in wrecked buildings aren't a great concern, said Peter Bloland, an associate director at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, speaking to reporters from Haiti.

"It's very, very rare for deceased people or dead bodies in the street or community to spread disease or be the source of outbreaks," he said.

Disease spreading in the tent cities, which lack sewage and running water, is the greatest worry, Bloland said.

"We need to be very vigilant about things such as respiratory disease and diarrheal disease," he said.

Funding Haiti's recovery will cost "billions of dollars" over the next five years, Pamela Cox, the World Bank's vice president for Latin America and the Caribbean, said at a conference of aid donors in Montreal on Jan. 25.

Oil and Gas

Haiti may be sitting on a reservoir of oil and gas that could help its long-term recovery and the temblor's fault line may have left fresh clues of fuel deposits.

Oil and gas can seep to the surface after earthquakes, Stephen Pierce, a geologist who worked in the region for 30 years for companies including the former Mobil Corp., said in a telephone interview.

He said previous estimates show as much as 1 trillion cubic feet of gas and 3 million barrels of oil could lie in formations near the earthquake fault.

Donors have given $1.05 billion to Haiti and pledged another $982 million, according to United Nations figures.

Companies from Abbott Laboratories to Yum! Brands Inc., non-profits including the Albanian Red Cross and the Verizon Foundation, and states from Tunisia to Thailand have pledged or given more than $2 billion to aid Haiti, according to a 42-page list of donations published by the UN yesterday.

The U.S. is the biggest state donor, contributing $184 million, about 38 percent of the aid pledged so far. Canada is second with $40 million, and France is third with $31 million.

To contact the reporters on this story: Peter S. Green in New York at psgreen at bloomberg.net ; Chris Dolmetsch at cdolmetsch at bloomberg.net.

news.yahoo.com/s/bloomberg/20100127/pl...

Kevin, January 27 2010, 7:01 AM

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