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He says the high price you pay has to do with the high price on the world market:

PM Dean Barrow
"It's not as though government is raking in any kind of windfall. What is triggering the increase in pump prices is the acquisition cost overseas of crude oil and what we then have to pay for the refined product. I can't go out there and do something about the import duty which is fixed - have the prices go down and then rush back to the House to take up back the import duty. What we are looking at is the GST because that is where in fact what government collects is not fixed. It increases as the overall acquisition cost increases. If we go that route, again the trick will be where you fix the GST rate on oil. If we half it for example, you are going to lose upwards of 13 million dollars for the year. We can't be expanding education, we can't be paying for infrastructure, we can't be employing all these people, we can't be paying the Super Bond without being assured of stable sources of revenue...so it's a hell of a conundrum but this government is here to solve conundrums and to fix problems and so something will have to be done at the time of the passage of the new budget."

The other pressing issue is the crisis in the sugar industry. As we reported last night, the BSI plant will have to shut down for three to four weeks to repair a steam turbines which served the BELCOGEN Plant.

The Prime Minister today said it is a major disappointment:..

PM Dean Barrow
"We were very devastated yesterday to hear that BSI will have to close down for it appears for about 4 weeks. I am meeting with the CEO of BSI this afternoon so that I might have full information on the details of the repairs that have to be done - as I understand it - either by external technical people coming in or by shipping parts out to Guatemala. Let us hope that in fact the repairs can be done in not more than 4 weeks and then we can get back up to full production. I believe all of you know that until that happened we were well underway to having the best crop in history in terms of the quality of cane, in terms of the efficiency of the delivery system, but man proposes and God disposes."

According to a release from BSI this afternoon, the turbines generate approximately 25 MW electrical power to supply the BSI sugar mill and to provide power to BEL.

The turnaround time for the first machine to be completed and reinstalled is expected to be four weeks. BSI notes that sugar production for the season so far is 30,580 tons which is 4,984 tons ahead of target. But, even with that, the latest overall cane estimate for the entire crop has been reduced to 1,050,000 tons.

They have so far milled 275,376 tons of cane which means that some 775,000 tons of cane remain to be crushed which at the expected average rate of grinding would take some 18 to 19 weeks to process.

A lot of numbers, but the bottom line is that BSI says it still expects to finish the crop within the 30 weeks originally planned. They projct that the total output should be approximately 115,000 tons of sugar which would be the largest since 2004.

And while Sugar is at a critical juncture, the antagonism in the citrus industry seems to only be intensifying. Both sides, the Citrus Growers and Banks Holdings held a meeting in Barbadoes recently where they agreed to disagree, profoundly. The PM told us more today:

PM Dean Barrow
"They have now agreed that there is a material dispute between them and that - that dispute is in fact going to be submitted to arbitration. This crop year again is heading up to be one of the best in recent times. Notwithstanding the hurricane, there is a bumper crop and prices are very good. CPBL though is experiencing a short term cash flow difficulty, there is a need for some bridge financing. I spoke to the CEO of CGA this morning, I've spoken to Denzil Jenkins two or so days ago and he told me what the CEO repeated this morning that they think they have the short term financing nailed down, however going forward there is still going to be a need for these two sides to work out their differences. This is now a matter principally for the lawyers and I will say nothing unkind about lawyers except that once they get involved I think you can kiss the chances of any amicable solution goodbye."

And while the crises in those industries are quite a headache - another is the issue of petroleum exploration. Recently a company called Paradise Energy was given a license to explore for oil in a block covering the Maya Mountain Masif, which includes 14 protected areas.

Those form one broad issue of contention and quite another is the fact that the 50% owner of paradise is Kimano Barrow, the Prime Minister's nephew. The PM discussed it today and we also got some insight into the process of how the exploration contract was granted:…

PM Dean Barrow
"In terms of the particular contract that you are talking about. I remember when the minister brought it to Cabinet. What I can tell you is my nephew is a shareholder. The Minister, Mr. Cho anybody in the petroleum department will tell you - not one day did I ever call the Minister or any of his officials to say 'you know what, there is an application for a PSA that a family member of mine is involved in.' I don't do that sort of thing and not a soul in this room can ever suggest that I do because if they did they will be lying. I don't play that."

Jules Vasquez
"With the fact that one of the applicants for Paradise Energy - did you look at it and say 'this is the Prime Minister's nephew, we have to look favorably on this'."

Andre Cho, Director of Petroleum and Geology
"No not at all, like the Prime Minister said and I think he was clear that he doesn't get involved in those things. In regards to the Maya mountains, the entire territory of Belize is divided into exploration blocks including the Maya mountains and all the exploration blocks are either categorized as a very low potential areas. Low potential, medium and high, so those blocks in the Maya mountains are very low potential and so the government's policy in regards to those blocks is that if a company, whether local or international, is interested and willing to take the risks and invest some minimum expenditure and a work program in accessing the petroleum potential of the Maya mountains, then the government's policy is we can issue a license to them and collect rental and administrative fees. The main thing with those very low potential blocks like in the Maya mountains is that the government can generate some revenue from the fees and Paradise fees for the first years paid $300.000.00 Belize dollars which is half of my department's budget, so we've generated that revenue for the government. So you have to see what is the logical and most beneficial thing when it comes to situations like that."

PM Dean Barrow
"The fact is that the locals in the company no doubt have partnered with foreigners. So to say that these locals don't have the financing or the expertise - man doesn't make sense, nobody in this country has the expertise."

Andre Cho, Director of Petroleum and Geology
"Exploration and productions license can be granted either through one of two processes. The first is through a competitive bidding round which is a forum where the government would advertise vacant exploration blocks both locally and internationally to attract companies and then a session would be held either in country or out of the country in some place where for example like in Houston - which is the capital of petroleum in this side of the world - and the companies would submit their bids and publicly the bids would be open and the minister would select the best bid and he would approve that application to that company and thereafter you would enter into negotiations for the license. The other process is the application or applications would go to Cabinet for approval. So if there is no bidding round then all the applications would have to go to Cabinet. The last bidding we had was in 1995 and since then we haven't have any bidding round, so when we received applications from all the companies that had licenses, all those applications went to Cabinet for review and approval. This is common all over the world. Governments would hold bidding rounds when they think that they would get interest from companies and you would only get interest from companies if you have good petroleum potential, you are making discoveries so the companies are confident that if they get a license the chances of success would be high and that's the major factor in determining whether you have a bidding round. And at this point in time we don't believe that a bidding round is feasible because we don't know that we would get the interest that we would want even though we've made a commercial discovery in Spanish Lookout field, we want to make at least one big onshore discovery before we do a bidding round."

PM Dean Barrow
"What on earth can be wrong with government awarding the concession, it's not as though there were 3 or 4 interested parties and some special favor was given to Paradise. No, nobody else wanted it, Paradise applied, obviously was able to convince the minister and his experts that they had the wherewithal to make a go of this thing in terms of the exploration process. He brought it to Cabinet, Cabinet approved it - end of story. It was made public. There is not a damn thing - because the Cabinet press release went out - there is not a damn thing wrong with that process and that is a position by which I stand."

He stands by the position - but to do so the Prime Minister would be wrong in at least one regard, there was no Cabinet Brief - those don't even exist anymore, apparently though the head of government didn't get the memo. The Paradise Energy license was discovered by OCEANA two weeks ago when it received the most updated map from Andre Cho. The license had been issued in October, 2010.