Public pressure is mounting on Prime Minister Said Musa to cancel the two controversial oil contracts for Blocks 15 and 16 in the Mountain Pine Ridge. The contracts have been given to two Belizean companies, ZMT, and BCH, registered to Antonio Zabaneh (husband of House Speaker Elizabeth Zabaneh) and Mike Dunker, both businessmen of Independence Village.
Government signed a PSA (Production Sharing Agreement) with the two companies (ZMT and BCH) on July 24, 2007. Under these agreements, government would get a maximum of 15 percent of revenues from oil found in the area. It is reported that a competing company, Lagoon Resources Ltd., had offered the government 40 percent for the said blocks.
PM Musa, in explaining to the media why his government had accepted the far lesser offer from ZMT and BCH, said that not only was the Cabinet satisfied that Belize was not losing out on the deals which Natural Resources Minister Florencio Marin had presented, but in fact, the deals were, in Cabinet’s opinion, in the public’s interest.
Last Wednesday afternoon, October 17, the Opposition UDP had held a press conference to expose the questionable deals with ZMT and BCH, and callers to the daily radio talk shows have lambasted the government for what they see as two deals that smack of PUP insider hustling.
Channel 7 reported tonight that Cabinet was in what it said was an “emergency meeting” to decide how to deal with the burgeoning scandal. Channel 7 also reported that it had uncovered proof that up until just a weekend before the unfavorable PSA’s were signed, the PSA’s agreed to by Cabinet were much better in their production share percentages.
Former Minister of Natural Resources and the Environment, Hon.Johnny Briceño, had insisted to Amandala last week that the agreements made with BCH and ZMT by his successor, Hon. Florencio Marin, were substantially different from those he had left behind.
Today the Association of Concerned Belizeans (ACB) fired off a stiff press release, saying that “the ACB cannot comprehend how, in Belize’s post oil-discovery era, any elected official of this country could have rejected an offer from a legitimate oil company to pay to the people of Belize a 15% royalty on the gross with a 23% payout on the net from oil revenues, and instead give two contracts to favoured speculators for a paltry 7.5% royalty and 1.5% payout on the net.”
The ACB continues: “To add insult to injury, the 1.5% is on revenue from the first 25,000 bbls/day, maxing out at a low 15% only after production exceeds 225,000 bbls/day; whereas the 23% was on revenues from the first 5,000 bbls/day, increasing by 5% incrementally up to a maximum of 43% for anything over 30,000 bbls/day.
“Compare: 15% after 225,000 bbls/day with 43% after 30,000 bbls/day.”
The agreements are “so prejudicial,” says the ACB, that they are calling on the government to cancel them immediately.
And that’s not all. The ACB wants company. It wants the Belize Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the National Trade Union Congress, Belize Business Bureau, the Council of Churches, the Opposition party, “and every right-thinking Belizean” to bring pressure on PM Musa to cancel the two PSAs to ZMT and BCH.