Friday, March 25, 2011

Belize has passed PEAK OIL PRODUCTION.




BELIZE HAS PASSED PEAK OIL PRODUCTION - THREE YEARS LEFT OF THE GOOD LIFE FOR POLITICIANS.

There are two oil fields in Belize. The first oil field ( a small pond of oil ) has passed peak oil production of 5000 barrels a day. The flow has dropped to 4000 barrels a day, even though many more oil pumping stations have been installed.
Three years is the current estimate left for the first oil pond production.
There is a second oil pond to be exploited and that may extend our small oil revenue inputs for another additional 5 to 6 years, being roughly of the same size as the first oil pond at Spanish Lookout.

The big thing is the effect on government revenues. Oil is currently running around 25% of our government revenues. There is little time left to shift the economy of Belize and turn it around, to light manufacturing. The Western FREE ZONE is now under construction activity, though no news has been issued publicly. Stores and offices of a minor tourist nature exist nearest a compartmented section by chain link fence near the Border immigration point. There are also two large warehouses being built, more to the Eastern section of the FREE ZONE. No local port town media dominating the news in Belize has yet done an in depth article on what is going on with this Western Free Zone. No advertisements concerning a ZONE AUTHORITY, or who is selling, or how they are being sold, the lots and layout for this FREE ZONE already being exploited by somebody.

The original estimate was ten years needed to shift the economy of Belize to light manufacturing to replace depleted oil tax revenues. The time may turn out to be actually shorter than that. As little as 7 years. Ideas floated, have been to invite Korean and Japanese garment investors from Guatemala. So far, no action on this front. Entrepreneurial fast track immigration is needed.
The best perfoming Cabinet Ministers have been Rene Montero, Minister of Agriculture and the Minister of Education, Patrick Faber. The attempts to change education to an entrepreneurial driven pragmatic system is ongoing, but not necessarily going fast enough and it does look like we will run out of oil revenues before any such education takes hold and makes a change in our economy. Accelerating our economic development using some major paradigm shifts takes priority over everything else. The cost of government is far higher than we can maintain, with our standard current economy before oil was discovered. Some serious planning needs to be done!

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