Richard Feinberg Invited to Speak at Public Forum in Belize City
Look before you leap, warns foreign oil expert
05/09/2011
The Reporter
Belize has yet to legislate into law proper safeguards and penalties to ensure that Belize's natural heritage, the Meso-American Barrier Reef, and other environmental protected areas, would be protected against an oil spill, in the event that one of the companies which have been granted exploration concessions were to find oil and go into production.
This was the verdict of U.S. oil expert Richard Steiner, who was invited by the Belize Coalition to Save Our National Heritage to do a rapid environmental assessment and to review our national oil spill contingency plan. Steiner offered his services pro bono and announced his findings in a press conference at the Coalition's office in the Programme for Belize building on Tuesday morning, May 3.
Steiner comes with impeccable credentials. A professor in marine biology and conservation at the University of Alaska from 1980 to 2010, now retired, he helped develop the U.S. Oil Pollution Act of 1990, passed in wake of the disastrous oil spill from the Exxon Valdez oil tanker in Prince William Sound, off Alaska in March 1989. Since then he has travelled the world, assessing environmental damage of oil spills, advising indigenous peoples and governments on clean-ups and other risks, as well as royalties and taxation issues.
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Richard Feinberg can comment on U.S. foreign policy matters, notably with regard to Latin America and Asia, and business and economic matters.
