Last week, Oceana Belize shocked the nation when they sounded the alarm that the government was planning to do seismic testing in our waters. As the vice president, Janelle Chanona, put it, the only reason to do seismic testing was to eventually proceed to offshore oil drilling. She believed that the government was planning to lift the ban on offshore drilling, and Oceana launched a petition which would hopefully trigger a referendum for the people to decide the course of action.
But the government had flatly refuted these claims, saying the reason they were looking into seismic testing was to find out what assets were underwater for leveraging those assets.
And over the weekend, we spoke to the prime minister in Dangige where he clarified their reasoning, and expressed his disappointment in VP Chanona for supposedly jumping the gun.
John Briceno, Prime Minister
"It's unfortunate that the Vice President decided to speed forward, because I thought that we were having a very open discussion about what are the possibilities. But to be able to try to turn it around as if the government is trying to do something behind the public's back, I find it disgusting that she would say such things. I thought she was a more honourable person that we could speak frankly and honestly, because she was not being honest. What we were talking about is that now that we finish with the issue with the Blue Bonds - that we said that this is important also to find out what is it that we have. But for us to be able to find that we may have to consider to do some seismic testing. The idea behind that I was saying that if we can, and we are not talking first of all, we are not talking about the reef - we are talking way in the deep in our exclusive economic zone. What if we could find an oil field say 500 million barrels of oil, what I said that once if we know that we have that, we know we have an asset that we could go to the rich countries and tell them pay us to keep it there. We don't want to take it out, but pay us for it and that's the discussion that she and I was having. At no time were we talking about going behind the Belizeans back to go and do any kind of offshore drilling. That is the discussion that we have and its unfortunate that she's trying to use that to try to make herself relevant. We have the notes, my CEO was there and she took copious notes about the discussion, but it is obvious that maybe she is trying to make herself relevant or trying to show her bosses that she's earning her money. You don't do that when you have this kind of discussion and I'm very upset and disappointed that she would say such thing."
