The implications of oil in Belize
Posted: 25/09/2007 - 12:40 PM “Today, many of the world’s largest oil fields – from Ghawar in Saudi Arabia to Prudhoe Bay in Alaska – are facing retirement, and the ultradeep frontier holds the industry’s best hope for big new discoveries.”
- pg. 115, WIRED, September 2007
“Chevron runs its offshore drilling operations out of a gleaming Houston skyscraper that recalls the nose of a double-barreled shotgun aimed skyward. Geologists work in cavernous visualization rooms with floor-to-ceiling monitors depicting digital renderings of the Gulf (of Mexico) waters and seabed. Chevron has long bet that there’s oil in these regions and has bought from the Department of the Interior almost twice as many federal leases to drill in the ultradeep waters of the Gulf as any other company.”
- ibid.
It may seem as if information technology rules the world, but actually petroleum still does. The implications of oil for Belize, the implications of oil in Belize, are staggering, but the masses of the Belize people are essentially ignorant on the matter. Because the ruling politicians are becoming rich off Belize’s oil, and because the politicians of the Opposition party know that it can be their turn to get rich after the next general elections, Belize’s two major political parties are not really interested in educating Belizeans about our oil resources and their implications for the country.
Belize Natural Energy (BNE) is pumping oil out of the ground at Spanish Lookout from two or three thousand feet under the surface of the Belizean earth. BNE is making a killing because their costs of production are absolutely minimal. But there is nothing we can see in Belize which is a tangible benefit from our country’s oil bonanza.
For many decades now, experts have been predicting that sources of alternative energy will replace oil. It hasn’t really happened. Petroleum deposits (fossil fuels) are more valuable today than they have ever been.
The worst international attack on the continental United States in its 231-year history took place on September 11, 2001. More than 3,000 Americans were killed when suicide bombers flew two hijacked commercial airliners into the World Trade Center buildings in New York City. Another set of suicide bombers crashed into the Pentagon, while yet another hijacked commercial airliner crashed in Pennsylvania after passengers fought with the hijackers. Of the 19 or 20 terrorists who died in these four passenger jets, three quarters of them were Saudi Arabians. Osama is a Saudi.
In the matter of oil importation, Saudi Arabia is the United States’ most important ally, because the largest known oil resources are located there. But the Saudi royal family, who have become some of the richest people on planet earth, have to contribute huge amounts of money to various Islamic religious movements in Saudi Arabia whose leaders despise the Saudi royal family and hate the United States of America. The same country, then, which has become extraordinarily wealthy because of American petrodollars, is the world’s no. 1 source for terrorist financing and conspiracy. Because of America’s dependence on foreign oil, their own money helps to finance people who are attacking them. The Americans are desperate to free themselves of this dependence.
The Belize-Peten-Chiapas oil fields are believed to be enormous. Spanish Lookout is just a small and experimental game in the larger oil picture which features Belize, northeastern Guatemala and southwestern Mexico. The problem for the oil companies, and by extension the United States, is the national boundaries involved here, especially the border between racist, oligarchical Guatemala and multi-ethnic, democratic Belize. Guatemala has an ancient claim to Belize which she will not relinquish, especially now that oil is a firm reality in Belize.
For Belizeans to get a sense of how valuable our own easily extracted petroleum is, they should read an article by Amanda Griscom Little in the September 2007 issue of the magazine WIRED. The article, entitled “Oil From The Reef,” explains how Chevron is about to commence drilling in the Gulf of Mexico on what they call the “Jack” field and think it may be the biggest US oil find in 40 years.
“A drill is plunging down through 4,000 feet of ocean and more than 22,000 feet of shale and sediment –a syringe prodding Earth’s innermost veins. That 5-mile shaft will soon give Chevron the deepest active offshore well in the Gulf. Some land drills have gone deeper, but extracting oil from below miles of freezing salt water and unyielding sediment creates a set of technical problems that far exceed those on terra firma.” The Chevron oil rig costs more than US $500,000 a day to run.
It’s much cheaper, hence more profitable, to extract oil from Belize than from the Gulf of Mexico. The people of Belize are sitting on a gold mine – black gold. The best case scenario for the oil companies, and hence the United States, is for Belize to become a part of Guatemala. Because Belizeans rejected this in 1968 and in 1981, that is why there are many other initiatives being supported by London and Washington whose aim is to seduce, confuse and undermine the multi-ethnic, democratic people of Belize.
One of the ways in which the United States is confusing Belizeans is through the American financing of evangelical churches and radio stations. Check out the amount of evangelical churches and radio stations which have sprung up in Belize over the last fifteen years. This financing is coming out of the “neocon” movement based in the southern United States. Now the evangelicals in Belize even have a television station. More than that, who is financing the avowedly Christian, expressly pro-Israel, National Reform Party (NRP)?
Belizeans are not important because white supremacists want to save our eternal souls. Belizeans are important because the United States, which uses more oil than any other nation in the world, needs the Belize-Peten-Chiapas petroleum reserves. Get real, Belizeans. Get real.
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