Officials from the Overseas Petroleum and Investment Corporation (OPIC), the international investment arm of the Chinese Petroleum Corporation (CPC), of Taipei, Taiwan, are due in Belize next week to finalize a petroleum exploration agreement for oil and natural gas with the Government of Belize.
Earlier this year Belize awarded OPIC an exploration license for approximately 4,600 square kilometers, or 1,800 square miles, mostly in the southern and central part of Belize – one of the largest concession areas for oil exploration in Belize.
Director of the Department of Geology and Petroleum, Andre Cho, confirmed to Amandala today that the Government of Belize is about to close negotiations with a state-owned petroleum company based in Taipei, Taiwan, for oil exploration mostly offshore Belize, and the deal is due to be finalized around the start of October, said Cho.
On Friday, September 19, a news report surfaced out of Taiwan, quoting Taiwan’s ambassador to Belize, Joseph Shih, as saying that the agreement would be signed next Monday, September 29.
“Noting that Belize is dubbed by many members of the U.S. media as the ‘Kuwait of Central America,’ Shih said ‘relations between Belize and Taiwan are moving from more traditional agriculture and economic relations to multi-dimensional cooperation,” says the Taiwan news report posted on “etaiwannews.com.”
An embassy official told Amandala today that Mr. Shih is not due to return to his Belize City office until the end of the month, and we would have to await his return for official comments.
In October 2006, under the former administration, Cabinet announced that it had given OPIC the green light to study seismic data in Belize, and to study and identify oil and gas potential in offshore areas of Belize.
Cabinet had said that, “The Chinese Overseas Petroleum and Investment Corporation (OPIC) will carry out an evaluation of the area which will entail reprocessing and evaluation of old seismic data. Their work will also take on the building up of the Geology and Petroleum Department’s data base, and the training of the Department’s technical staff in seismic processing and interpretation.”
An international industry source reported in June that old seismic data indicate that a total of 9 wells were drilled on the acreage assigned to OPIC, and two recorded oil shows while a third recorded oil and gas shows.
Cho told Amandala today that even though OPIC did not really meet the deadline to sign on to and formalize the permit for studying the seismic data, they had applied for a production sharing agreement or PSA – an agreement which should govern the terms and conditions of OPIC’s work in the licensed area offshore Belize, as well as Belize’s percentage take of petroleum revenues. However, the details have so far not been disclosed.
CPC claims to be Taiwan’s top enterprise with 14,768 employees and a variety of functional units around the island.
“As a state-run enterprise, our company is responsible for the development and supply of petroleum and natural gas, and is the core of Taiwan’s petrochemical industry,” the company says.