7 News Belize

Oil Spill, What If?
posted (August 8, 2018)

Much has rightly been made of the fact that Government has legislated a moratorium on off-shore oil exploration. But, what if there's an spill in Belizean waters from imported oil and fuels.  And what would the response be if there is a spill at the terrestrial oil exploration sites?

Those were some of the questions that experts were considering today.  
They're trying to finalize a National Oil Spill Contingency Plan, which would update the country's current response mechanism. 

For the Department of Environment, it's taken about a year to get to this final draft, which was put together after several consultations. They gathered all the relevant stakeholders at the Radisson for a 3-day meeting to review the final draft. 

We spoke with Environment Minister of State Omar Figueroa. Here's what he had to say about the plan, and these 3-day discussions:

Hon. Omar Figueroa - Minister of Stater, Environment
"The Belizean environment is extremely important to the people and government of Belize. For years and decades now oil spills have been considered one of the threats or potential threats to this Belizean environment, whether it is from production on land or the importation of fuel - of oil. The threat has been there to have an oil spill and we have never had a coordinated, well organized, a well-designed oil spill plan. To develop such a plan takes a lot of expertize, a lot of time, a lot of effort. The government of Belize realizing and understanding that this is an important plan that needs to be developed, we engage the consultant with regional and international expertize and we brought in all the players in Belize. The police, NEMO, the coast guard, the NGO community, private sector because we believe that everybody has a role to play in the event of an oil spill. So what the plan does essentially is it sets a plan forward and with rules and responsibilities of every individual, of every organization, what everyone needs to do in the event of an oil spill so that the responses become coordinated and it's no longer haphazard."

The meetings finish on Friday.

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