… and tells Mennonites that oil money soon come
The concerns of SATIIM have highlighted similar feelings in Spanish Lookout following assertions by members of the Mennonite community that their patience is wearing thin with the negative aspects of oil exploration in their neighbourhood. Those impacts allegedly include sickness, the inconvenience of moving house and an increase in unwelcomed traffic of equipment and people. The residents say that insult has been added to injury in that landowners of drilling sites have yet to be financially compensated as specified by law. Today Minister Briceño maintained that the Mennonites will not be short changed.
Johnny Briceño, Minister of Natural Resources and Environment
?The field of, this oil field has not been properly demarcated and right now, they are starting the three dimensional seismic test in the area that will show where the field is. And once the field has been properly demarcated, then we can look up and see who are the landowners of that field. It could be that the entire field is not only in the lands belonging to the Spanish Lookout community but also belong to people outside the community. So that any shares of revenues that we do has to be done among all the landowners and we have to work out the amount of acreage that they have to the amount of, the size of the field and the amount of revenues that are collecting. So it is a lot of issues that are taking place so I can understand their frustration. But now that we have a petroleum accountant, that has just came in and I met with him last night, one of the things that we are looking at is creating a new fund whereby all the revenues that are to go to the landowners can go to a special fund so that at least the Mennonite community can say, ok, the money is in that account and I know that when it is settled, I will have access to that money so we are looking at that issue.?
As for medical concerns, Briceño says plans are already advancing to create a network of pipelines that would move the crude oil to a tank farm located in an uninhabited area. The initiative is expected to eliminate flaring and substantially lower traffic within Spanish Lookout.
