Eco-friendly Belize wary of oil fever

SPANISH LOOKOUT, Belize – A Mennonite farmer watches a black plume of smoke spew from an oil well near his house in western Belize, the only visible sign that this tiny Central American nation is the world’s newest oil producer.

over 50 years in this former British colony bordering Guatemala and Mexico, but this year for the first time a joint venture between Belize Natural Energy Limited, or BNE, and Denver-based investment company CHx Capital finally struck the black gold mine.

In March BNE, a small company backed by some 80 Irish and American investors, declared the oil find commercially viable — big news for this sleepy country the size of Massachusetts.

The 6 million barrels of proven reserves in the Spanish Lookout area, inhabited mainly by a tight-knit community of Mennonite settlers, is a drop in the ocean of world oil supplies, but with crude prices topping $70 a barrel expectations are high.

Reuters