Government ecstatic about promising oil find in Orange Walk

The government is being cautious, but optimistic about what could likely be a promising oil find. The Geology and Petroleum Department, along with officials from Maranco Energy Belize Limited, are currently working around the clock assessing an oil find in the Orange Walk District to determine whether the recent discovery is of commercial quantity.  On Saturday, oil prospecting in the northwest block, an area covering approximately nine hundred, fifty-two square miles, led to the location of petroleum in an area under concession granted to Maranco.  In March 2011, the company won a production sharing agreement for exploration and production for a period of two years, along with three additional renewal periods.  The award came amidst strong opposition from the environmental community against new oil concessions in the north.  The find is said to be outside of the Rio Bravo Conservation and Management area and today News Five spoke with Minister of Energy and Sciences Joy Grant, who said that the department is ecstatic about the development.

Joy Grant, Minister of Energy & Science

Joy Grant

“We are very excited about what we found over the weekend which was an encouraging oil show.  We continue to do the tests.  There are several different phases in exploratory work, you know, you start with the seismic and then you go to exploratory wells and then to production.  So we’re at the point now where we’re continuing at the end of phase one and hopefully within the next four days or so we will know whether we will go into the second phase which will then determine unequivocally that this is a commercial find.  As you can imagine, the ministry, we want to be very sure that when we say anything to the Belizean public that it’s based on the facts on the ground.  So our staff they’ve been there twenty-four hours since we got the show and we will report very quickly to the Belizean public as we get more information but we continue to be encouraged.”