With the world now a place where U.S. President Trump can basically and publicly tell Ukraine President Zelensky: give me your minerals and I’ll give you security, I thought a couple articles from fifty years ago in this newspaper may be of interest to you.

The first article is from page 3 of the Friday, January 3, 1975 issue of AMANDALA. The article is in italics:

Black Gold

A recent article in the NEW YORK TIMES has stated that the most exciting recent oil discoveries have been made in the Reforma fields in the southeastern Mexican states of Chiapas and Tabasco, operated by the Mexican state oil company — Petroleum Mexicanos.

The fields have grown in a little more than a year from less than 20,000 barrels to more than 230,000 barrels a day, representing 37 per cent of Mexico’s production and making Mexico an oil exporter. 

The Mexican success has set off hopes for other Central American wildcat areas in Guatemala, Nicaragua, and Belize.

The second, longer article is from page 9 of our Friday, February 28, 1975 issue. The article is in italics:

Mexican Oil Finds Generate Belize Interest

BELMOPAN — The major new oil field reportedly discovered in Mexico has already rekindled interest in Central America on the part of oil companies, and it seems probable that Belize will experience a new wave of prospecting and exploration activity.

U.S. oil companies are precluded from exploring in Mexico — the industry has been Government-owned since 1938 – so countries adjacent to the southern borders of Mexico are prime targets at the moment.

Mr. Philip Anschutz, president of the Denver-based Anschutz Overseas Corporation, has already drilled four holes — all dry — in Belize, and has plans to drill four more. He considers the Mexican finds to be “very encouraging.”

The successful Chiapas/Tabasco wells of Mexico produce from the Cretaceous geological zone which runs through northern Guatemala and northern Belize, and it is in this ancient strata that Anschutz Overseas, in cooperation with People’s Gas Company of Chicago, is working with a Wilson Mogul 42 Self-Propelled Drilling Rig.

Over the past few years, it has been consistently rumoured that oil had been found in the Guatemalan jungle province of Peten, which is contiguous with Belize’s western border. The reports were officially denied, but those who watch the ancient Anglo Guatemalan Border Dispute have long considered that Guatemalan concern for getting oil out of land-locked Peten has played a part in that nation’s thinking over the old dispute, which still hangs like the Sword of Damocles over Belize’s future as an independent nation.

It has now become known that Basic Resources International found oil several years ago in Peten while drilling core holes for sulphur, and the company currently has a 50 per cent stake in a 3.6 million acre oil exploration concession, which is being actively worked. The remaining 50 per cent is held by Saga Petroleum, a Norwegian firm, and by the Shenandoah Oil Corporation of Fort Worth, Texas.

Last June, drilling into the Cretaceous zone, this three-partner joint venture struck oil, which despite mechanical difficulties, shows a potential of being able to produce up to 2,250 barrels a day.

Reports of the tests carried out more than two years ago on Belize’s Barrier Reef are also being looked at again by oil specialists in the light of the new Mexican finds.