The off­shore ex­plo­ration for oil in ar­eas be­ing con­test­ed by neigh­bour­ing Venezuela is be­ing faced with set­backs.Nat­ur­al Re­sources and En­vi­ron­ment Min­is­ter Robert Per­saud in mak­ing this rev­e­la­tion said this is linked to the ex­pul­sion and tem­po­rary seizure of the Malaysian seis­mic re­search ves­sel, RV Teknik Per­dana, by Venezuela's Navy last year.

Per­saud in re­spond­ing to ques­tions from the Par­lia­men­tary Sec­toral Com­mit­tee on Nat­ur­al Re­sources, on Mon­day said Guyana is now de­pend­ing on an even­tu­al res­o­lu­tion in its favour."How­ev­er, we are en­gaged in the com­pa­nies who might be af­fect­ed and we have re­mained op­ti­mistic that those mat­ters will be re­solved in a man­ner that will al­low us to con­tin­ue and pro­ceed with those ac­tiv­i­ties," he said.

Con­cern­ing ac­tiv­i­ties out­side of that par­tic­u­lar zone "where we had dif­fi­cul­ties with Venezuela, those ac­tiv­i­ties have not been ham­pered in any way, and they in fact are pro­ceed­ing apace," the min­is­ter said.Per­saud al­so stat­ed that ap­pli­ca­tions are be­ing processed for ad­di­tion­al com­pa­nies in­ter­est­ed in oil ex­plo­ration and this in­for­ma­tion will be shared with the com­mit­tee.

The min­is­ter al­so re­vealed that the Es­so Ex­plo­ration ini­tia­tive in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Shell is on stream and the com­pa­nies have com­menced work.

CANA