It looks like we’re one step closer to figuring out if Jamaica really has oil.

There’s been lots of oil news coming out of the region lately. United Oil & Gas has been given the final approvals to start exploring for oil and gas off Jamaica’s coast. 

They’ll be testing in an area called the Walton-Morant block, which is located off Jamaica’s south coast. 

These approvals include two main things. First, they got an environmental permit from the National Environment and Planning Agency (NEPA). This permit lasts for five years and allows them to do non-invasive surveys offshore. 

The surveys include studying how deep the seabed is, checking the ground under the sea, and baseline studies of the environment. 

They also got a beach licence, which is the big one.  This allows the company to take samples from the seabed to look for signs of oil and gas. 

The results will help United decide whether to drill a test well in the future, which would confirm the findings. 

The Walton-Morant block is very large, over 22,000 square kilometres. United thinks many places within the block could have oil or gas. 

And they have some really big estimates, possibly several billion barrels in total if exploration succeeds. But I want to stress that these are just estimates! Testing hasn’t even started yet, and the entire process will take months before it’s completed.

But it is exciting times for Jamaica. An oil discovery here would change the country’s energy future. Not to mention more jobs and more revenue inflows.

But definitive answers are still a long way off…. And that’s the bottom line.