Southern Choice Butane Closes All Branches

The war waged by the former LPG importers has moved to another level. Today, Southern Choice Butane (Zeta Gas) announced that it is shutting down operations countrywide.  Fifty employees are being affected while two hundred individuals are being indirectly impacted.  The company says that as of Monday, May eleventh it closed all its branches to the public as it has sold all the Liquid Petroleum Gas from its facilities. The company’s license expired at the end of April and it has been unable to procure LPG from the National Gas Company Limited.  Attorney Audrey Matura says that the company could be forced to close its doors permanently due to both the Belize Bureau of Standards refusal to step in and address the crisis and the lack of information from the National Gas Company on the price it will sell LPG.

Audrey Matura

Audrey Matura, Attorney

“Zeta is telling you the National Gas Company is refusing to sell me. They are saying they cannot sell because there is not a commercial operation date yet. But better yet, we have been asking them for the price, the sale price. They can’t even give that. We have written the government. We said please help us, we need the sale price. Now my client’s business closed down. Why? The National Gas Company cannot supply. It does not matter how much they have in stock. It is  of no use to have it in some fancy warehouse that they have if they can’t bring it to the next step and they can’t answer to that. I can tell while I don’t know the information as to how much distribution and family are affected directly, I can tell you that all of the employees are affected directly because Z Gas is actually weighing its options and there might be need for, if we cannot resolve this quickly, them to close down. In this time of COVID-19 where we are having financial crisis the last thing you want is to affect employees. I know that the three companies jointly employ over three hundred and fifty persons.”