The question that's often asked when it comes to the oil that Belize Natural Energy is exporting from Spanish Lookout is: "why aren't we using our oil in Belize to drive down the punishing pump price?” The simple answer is that the oil needs to be refined. And if you ask why don't we refine the oil? Then the answer to that it is that, right now, Belize just doesn't produce nearly enough oil to justify too expensive to set up a refinery or that Belize doesn't have enough oil to sustain a refinery. But is it too expensive? Well tonight we'll introduce to Belizean entrepreneur who says otherwise. Keith Swift has the story.
Keith Swift Reporting,
We know Rafael Gongora as the citrus man. He has harnessed just about every byproduct from a citrus base – he has citrus cleaning oils, healing oils, and just about everything in between on his list of seven products, all citrus based. Gongora is now using that same citrus technology to do something no one else in Belize has done. Gongora uses what he calls steam distillation. To put it simply, that is the process he uses to extract cleaning and healing oils from citrus.
Rafael Gongora,
“The steam comes through and it heats up the petroleum oil and then it evaporates it and it goes through the condenser and then you get the gasoline and water. That is what we use to do it.”
The end product is this. Gongora says this crystal clear gasoline is comparable to the grade of gasoline you buy at the gas station.
Rafael Gongora,
“This one here, the finished gasoline is comparable with the gasoline we burn day to day. We ran a test burning the same quantity of this gasoline and burning this one, this is the one we have here in Belize. They put coloring to distinguish the grade of the gasoline. That is why you see it comes out clear like this but they put some coloring.”
Keith Swift,
So both of these are the same and this one you refined?
Rafael Gongora,
“Yes if I colored it, it would come the same here. I refined this one and this is from abroad.”
At best Gongora is micro-refining. He only has 8 gallons of crude oil from BNE. But he’s sure this is the start of something. He says when you look at this bottle, you are looking at the future of Belize’s oil.
Rafael Gongora,
“I know that you need a professional way of taking out diesel, gasoline, and high octane for airplane and so on. You need a fractional distillation process and I believe in a small scale it could be done here. There is no problem with that. And with this oil, it will make us more independent and our company is gradually replacing the imported products and that is what Belize wants, to create more products here in Belize and giving more jobs which is needed.”
As mentioned in the story, Gongora started with 8 gallons he got from BNE. He has sent the results to BNE but they have yet to reply.
