Oil company seeks standby pipeline at Kendal
As we’ve highlighted throughout our coverage of the damage caused by Tropical Storm Arthur, the loss of the Kendal Bridge across the Sittee River resulted in significant hardship to the shrimp, banana, citrus, construction and oil industries. Those investors have played a key role in relief efforts to open the road as soon as possible but as Chief Executive Officer of Belize Natural Energy, Dr. Gilbert Canton, stressed to us today, the causeway now in place is only a temporary solution. In the event that transportation to the south is cut off again by flooding rains, B.N.E. devised an alterative to shipping oil across the river by truck. But the company’s plans to build tanks on either side of the river connected by a pipeline hit a snag earlier this week when the Department of the Environment issued a stop order against the project. Canton expressed surprise at D.O.E.’s position, maintaining that environmental officers were fully apprised of the plans from the get-go. Since then B.N.E. has received a green light to continue and Canton told us this morning that it is imperative for a back-up plan to be in place so that oil revenues continue to flow into Belmopan.
Dr. Gilbert Canton, C.E.O., B.N.E.
“One of the ideas that we came up with was to put a temporary facility across the river to try to see if we can pump safely, environmentally safely and everything, across the river and we came up with some engineering designs to do that. And I want to stress that this is a very temporary situation, that once the road was opened up again this facility would not be used. They actually got the low level crossing in place and we are now moving the oil tankers across there and we have people on spot and booms in the river just to make sure that if anything happens that we’re safe but it’s been clear to cross and trucks starting rolling yesterday and we’ve got the field operational again. As everybody says we don’t know how long or how permanent that crossing is, it depends again on rains, it’s not there for the long term so we have to put something in place that in the event that goes down, there is some way, and again I’m going to stress that as long as it’s safe and sound to operate what we’re talking about then we’d use that in the interim but it’s not a permanent structure that we are looking to put there.”
Janelle Chanona
“Does this vulnerability highlight the need for B.N.E. to investigate other ways of transporting oil?”
Dr. Gilbert Canton
“It is something like the chicken and egg situation because we’ve always wanted and contemplated putting in a pipeline to the coast underwater pipeline out to the sea, buoys out there to load the vessels which would bring down transportation costs but then the question is, is there enough oil to do that? We need to find more oil and that’s the bottom line. All emphasis must be placed on exploring and finding more oil and then as we get larger in terms of reserves, then all these things can become more of a reality for us.”
According to Canton, the D.O.E. was to inspect the site for the temporary tank facility at Kendal on Friday but the department cancelled the visit. Oil trucks have been using the causeway since Thursday to move the crude from Iguana Creek to B.N.E.’s storage tanks at the port of Big Creek.
