Belize Natural Energy continues oil exploration activities at Spanish Lookout. But even as exploration continues, the company has already sold its first shipment of crude, which was shipped out of the Big Creek Port two weeks ago. That move alone generated a great deal of interest because if they're selling oil commercially, it would seem to indicate that there is oil in commercial quantities. But not so fast. That's what Director of Belize Natural Energy Sheila McCaffrey told us today.
Jules Vasquez,
How much is the volume of oil that it is pushing out right now?
Sheila McCaffrey, Director of BNE
"That's just too difficult a question to answer at the moment because all of the zones are not completed in the well and we're still continuing to work on it and gaining information about the reservoir."
Jules Vasquez,
The official estimates are that both Mike Ushers #1 and #2 have been producing at the rate of five hundred barrels a day but we have received inside information that its one thousand a day each, so we're at least at two thousand barrels a day.
Sheila McCaffrey,
"Every single day I am subjected to rumors and innuendos in Belize so the answer is we actually haven't been able to keep our wells fully opened and fully flowing for the period of time so its untrue to say any accurate amount of oil has been flowing. We do know we've had our wells opened, they are flowing well and we have in the high hundreds of barrels of oil but to be more specific than that, would be a distortion on reality because we haven't had a consistent flow rate for a set number of days."
Jules Vasquez,
A little over a week ago 33,000 barrels of oil were shipped out from the Big Creek Port, how much did you all sell that for to your partners in Houston?
Sheila McCaffrey,
"The barge actually wasn't sold to Houston, another myth which I would actually like to dispel. It would actually sold in the Panama Canal and the barge was actually sold at market price on the day. The oil is going into the market at the marketplace at West Texas intermediate level."
Jules Vasquez,
I didn't understand any of that, I know that everyday we hear on the news oil is selling at US$67 a barrel. Is that what you all sold it for, ancillary cost excluded for the time being?
Sheila McCaffrey,
"Well west Texas intermediate oil, as I understand it, is somewhere between US$66 and US$68 a barrel for the last month. 2006 is going to be an amazing year for everybody and I think we're going to be able to continue to get really good quality information which is going to give us more and more information about what actually is down there and I just say to people, patient is a wonderful thing but just bear in mind that its eight month exactly from the day we arrived in Belize with a drilling rig until we had our first shipment out of the country and by anybody's standards internationally, that is a very good record to hold and there are not many places in the world that that level of work has been achieved."
McCaffrey says that right now they only have a two thousand barrel tank to store the oil that comes out of the ground, and once that is full, they have to shut off the wells. She says that so far her company has invested 12 million dollars, and needs to spend another $20 million to have the operation fully functioning. In two months time, her company will commission the first three dimensional seismic analysis of the oil rich area which should give some definitive approximation of the extent of the area where there is oil. According to McCaffrey that seismic profile will cost $5 million.
