Caribbean & Central America - August 2022

*** SURINAME TO OFFER MORE OIL BLOCKS. Suriname, which is hoping to emulate Guyana’s success in new oil discoveries, has said it is planning to put up some 60% of its offshore oil bocks for tender over the next 12 months. The first tender will be in the final quarter of 2022. TotalEnergies, which has made five discoveries in Suriname’s waters, has still to make its final investment decision. However hopes remain high and the US Geological Survey has said that it believes the Guyana-Suriname Basin could contain over 32bn barrels of undiscovered oil resources. As at the end of 2021, it was estimated that around 2bn barrels of oil resources had been discovered in Suriname’s offshore waters.

Trinidad & Tobago’s Prime Minister Keith Rowley, speaking on 4 July, at the end of the latest Caricom (Caribbean Community) Heads of Government summit, said that Guyana, Suriname, and Trinidad & Tobago would resist any pressures to stop the exploitation of the region’s hydrocarbon resources. He said: “We – Trinidad & Tobago, Guyana, and Suriname – we have agreed that our position is that as long as those resources are within our territory, whether on land or in our maritime jurisdiction, we will exploit them.”

*** BAHAMAS TO FACE US$850M ANNUAL LOSSES FROM STORMS. A new Climate Spending Report from the World Bank and The Bahamas’ finance ministry has concluded that “the country faces an average annual loss (AAL) from windstorms of US$850m and a probable maximum loss (PML) for a 250-year event of US$20.5bn – nearly 45% of the country’s capital stock.” Hurricane Dorian in 2019 produced economic losses in excess of US$3.4bn. The report says the government plans to spend US$72m on climate change in 2021/22, some 2.3% of the budget. It will also spend US$54m in disaster risk management.