And while Briceno says the company is getting away, director Sheila McCaffrey argues that, right now, in fact, her company is again a victim of government indecision. She told the press that because of the recent interim defeat government suffered in court over an EIA for drilling by U.S. Capital Energy in southern Belize, Belize Natural Energy has been ordered to complete its environmental impact assessment. According to McCaffrey, earlier instruction from Belmopan was that all they needed was an environmental compliance plan, but suddenly they need to complete the EIA and until that is completed, they've stopped operations. Briceno says that's not quite accurate. Here are comments from both.
Sheila McCaffrey,BNE
"The government has imposed these new guidelines and again changed the goal post. We've had to shut down our drilling operations so sadly from our point of view, today we have to announce that our drilling operations as of yesterday was closed and our rigs were stacked because of the environmental compliance plans that has been asked. And the EIA is underway and it is dependent upon the government accepting our EIA."
Hon. Johnny Briceno,
"I just spoke to the Director of Petroleum Mr. Andre Cho and he said he called them up to find out about the stop order, because the Department certainly had not been informed, and they are saying it was a misunderstanding, a misquote, that's not what they were trying to bring across. But it's important for us to clear this up. Their work has not been stopped, they're continuing to work, but they are being closely monitored by the Department of Environment as required by law."
Jules Vasquez,
So the government has not ordered them to stop nor has it enforced any stoppage. It has simply, you are saying, it has simply indicated that they must speed up the completion of the EIA.
Hon. Johnny Briceno,
"No we did, about two weeks ago I think, we did stop them for a day because we said that we were getting nowhere. They came on board, they sat down, they came up with a work program for the preparation of the EIA and they have continued to work."
