The Bahamas government surprisingly announced yesterday that it has taken a policy decision to suspend consideration of all applications for oil exploration and drilling in the waters of The Bahamas.<\/p>\n
“The Ministry of The Environment believes that this prudent policy requirement is in the best interest of The Bahamas and the social, economic and environmental well-being of future generations of Bahamian citizens and visitors,” said a statement released to the press.<\/p>\n
Minister for the Environment Dr Earl Deveaux admitted that the government has received an accelerated number of applications from companies wishing to explore or drill for oil in Bahamian waters.<\/p>\n
But, he said, the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico this summer was also, taken into consideration.<\/p>\n
Deveaux said there is a real likelihood of finding oil in The Bahamas.<\/p>\n
“And so we need to be positioned to accommodate that likelihood,” he said.<\/p>\n
The statement from the ministry said all existing licenses will be reviewed to ascertain any legal entitlement for renewal.<\/p>\n
However, companies that currently have licenses have been informed of the government’s revised position.<\/p>\n
“What makes The Bahamas special is its environment. Those things we need to have careful regard for before we go following the money,” the minister added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Finally wising up to the damaging effects it would have on tourism, the Bahamas government has said that there will be no oil exploration in the Islands of The Bahamas.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"facebook_10223285771444175_51037792744":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[76],"class_list":["post-1547","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-headlines","tag-environment-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1547","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1547"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1547\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}