And while Belize fights to get back the Santa Rosa territory, oil contractors are fighting to get at what's beneath that territory. Every square inch of Belize than can be explored for oil is now under contract to be explored. The final few pieces were signed away at a ceremony this afternoon. Here's more.
Jules Vasquez Reporting,
For an oil company, this is what the map of Belize looks like. It is allotted into what are called exploration blocks, 21 of them. Today 7 production sharing agreements were signed for the last 8 blocks that are available. So this means that all exploration blocks in the country are now under contract. These have been awarded to a total of 17 companies - 14 of which are multinationals, 3 are local.
The contracts are for Princess Petroleum Ltd., Miles Tropical Energy, BelGeo
Ltd, Providence Energy Ltd, Sol Oil Ltd, Blue Creek Exploration Ltd, and PetroBelize Ltd.
We wish we could tell you which faces are for which companies, but we can't. That's because these pictures were provided to us by the Ministry of Natural Resources after the production sharing agreements were signed in a conference room in the Corozal Free Zone.
Minister of Natural Resources Florencio Marin presided over a ceremony that from what we can tell was designed to exclude the independent media. It was held at 3:00 pm on a Friday, in the Corozal Free Zone. On the press notice, the location was not disclosed and the only video camera there was for the Belize Press Office.
But the contracts were signed and these happy faces will now have to get very busy as under the terms of the agreement they have 90 days to begin exploration. The press notice states that since oil was found in Spanish Lookout, interest in oil exploration was renewed. These seven agreements and three more signed a few months ago are part of that oil rush.
The agreements are for 8 years and were developed with assistance from the Commonwealth Secretariat supposedly to provide improved benefits for Belizeans. Work is presently ongoing in 6 blocks, and will now start in 8 other blocks.
The agreements are available to the public and at the Geology and Petroleum Department on Unity Boulevard in Belmopan.
