And while the crime crisis has the Barrow administration under political pressure, the other pressing problem is the rising cost of living. Fuel prices are a big part of that –and today Barrow discussed a plan by a company named Blue Sky, working in tandem with Belize Natural Energy to produce diesel fuel from Belizean oil. Sounds like good news, because with the price of diesel now pegged at over $9 and crushing the productive sector, the relief would be very welcome. But it’s not that simple. Barrow explained that while everyone wants cheap diesel, government has to be careful not to undersell Esso by too much.
Dean Barrow,
“I have spoken to the principal of BNE who is involved in the Blue Sky partnership and he tells me that they are just about ready to sell commercially their blended diesel products. I can only hope that that is so and that will be left is for us to figure out how we’re going to apply an excise duty so that there is not too huge a differential. Because remember while we want to bring prices down, the international boys, the Exxon people, can always threaten us that if there is too huge a dent in their market, they are going to pick up their marbles and go and we have to then know how we will source the fuel needs of this country.
Bottom line is we have to do something to ease pressure locally and PetroCaribe is another source, another direction in which we must look to try and do that.”
Presently, the Petrocaribe arrangement is that government pays for only 60% of the fuel from Petro Caribe and pays for the remaining 40% with credit over a long term. That should now be even more concessionary at 50% paid, 50% credited because the price of oil has jumped $100 a barrel. But he hinted that the present arrangement where the Petro-Caribe fuel is received, stored and sold by a private company, which then pays government the full value in cash, might have to be adjusted to put it directly into government’s hands which would require construction of an US$8 million tank farm facility.
