15 thousand barrels of preferentially priced diesel fuel from Venezuela...so much has been said about it, yet so little is known. Well, tonight what we do know is that the fuel is in storage at Esso's fuel depot in Belize City.
That's a breakthrough, because it had been sitting on a ship since Tuesday, November eighth because Esso refused to accept it and government had nowhere else to store it. But, as we understand it, government basically forced Esso to accept it. Still, Esso only agreed to that over the weekend when executives from regional headquarters in Miami came to Belize to work out an agreement with government. We are told that under that agreement, government indemnified it from certain contingencies and agreed to pay what are known as "thru-put" costs for processing the fuel.
That settlement was none too easy to arrive at as Exxon, one of the largest, most profitable companies in the world, made its displeasure with the arrangement known to the U.S. State Department. That displeasure arises because, as we understand it, Esso feels it has been forced to undermine its own product, storing marginally cheaper fuel for a competitor, even when that competitor is government.
Government will now try and sell that fuel most likely to industrial customers such as BEL, fish farms and the citrus company. A BEL representative today confirmed that it has been approached to purchase the fuel but nothing final has been worked out.
And while this shipment of fuel is now safely stored, it's left to be seen how the future of the arrangement will work out, as Esso appears disinclined to make it more than a one time deal, which would mean that government would have to come up with a long term storage solution which is a costly undertaking.
