And this morning, not nearly as hot under the collar was Oceana's vice president, Janelle Chanona. She appeared on on Sunup on 7 via Zoom, where she spoke about the government's press release that was issued the same day of their press conference. She explained that while she's glad there have been no issued contracts as yet, she stands by the point that seismic testing should be a national decision.
Janelle Chanona, Vice President, Oceana
"As has been confirmed by the press release issued by the government of Belize on Thursday evening, the government has intentions to conduct seismic and we have had a conversation with the Prime Minister in September to talk about strengthening the moratorium and making sure that we can leverage that political will and that political commitment by such an important strengthening move and that's when we found out that this intention was there and I think it was a relief for me personally to read that contracts had not yet been signed with the seismic studies because I think as we've talk about before as well. Usually, we find out about contracts being signed after the fact and usually there is a big bill attached. So that was a personal relief and I think the other big takeaway from this weekend is also that this now a national conversation. These are shared resources and that's what we want. We want Belizeans to be engaged, we want people to be talking about this, because at the end of the day whatever happens next on offshore oil will affect all of us, so all of us should be talking about it and have a vote on that."
Oceana's members are currently going around the country collecting signatures for the petition.
