The drilling is scheduled to start this month in waters off the Bahamas, just 150 miles from the Florida coast. It's raising alarms among environmental groups and businesses that rely on tourism.

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In a few weeks, offshore oil drilling is set to begin in the Caribbean, just 150 miles from the Florida coast. President Trump recently signed an order extending a ban on drilling in U.S. Atlantic waters. But in the Bahamas, a small company has received permission to start exploratory drilling near one of the country's most important marine sanctuaries. NPR's Greg Allen reports from Miami.

GREG ALLEN, BYLINE: The Bahamas Petroleum Company is headquartered not in the Bahamas, but the United Kingdom. It has offices in the Bahamas. More importantly, it has leases on potential oil fields covering 4 million acres in waters between Andros, the nation's largest island, and the north coast of Cuba.

CASUARINA MCKINNEY-LAMBERT: And right now, we're faced with a drillship that is currently crossing the Atlantic and headed for the Bahamas.

ALLEN: That's Casuarina McKinney-Lambert with the Bahamas Reef Environment Educational Foundation. A few weeks ago, the Bahamas Petroleum Company announced that a high-tech drillship would arrive in Bahamian waters this month to drill for oil. The company did an environmental impact assessment and received approval from the Bahamian government. McKinney-Lambert says the company has tried to reassure critics by stressing that this is just an exploratory well. But she notes the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico a decade ago was also exploratory drilling.

MCKINNEY-LAMBERT: Exploratory wells can be even more dangerous than extracted wells. So we're very concerned about that and the potential for a large spill. But we're also concerned about the day-to-day operation.

ALLEN: BPC says the drilling site will be 90 miles from a national park on Andros Island. It's also not far from where Shawn Leadon operates a fishing lodge and an ecotourism business. Leadon says the national park includes the largest estuary in the Bahamas, an incubator for marine species that's important to the entire Caribbean.

SHAWN LEADON: Not only is it going to damage my business, it's going to damage the fisheries. It's going to damage the airline industry. It's going - it's a domino effect, you know?

ALLEN: A coalition of businesses and environmental groups, Our Islands, Our Future, has gathered more than 50,000 signatures on a petition asking the Bahamian government to cancel all oil exploration licenses and ban offshore drilling. If there's no response, the group says it will take legal action to block the drilling. BPC has declined requests for interviews.

A big question is, who will respond if there's a major spill? Eight years ago, when Cuba was preparing to drill exploratory wells in its waters, the U.S. Coast Guard and Cuban authorities worked out a detailed agreement on how they would coordinate their response. So far, the Coast Guard hasn't said what its role will be if there's a spill in the Bahamas. Jorge Pinon, head of the Latin American and Caribbean Energy program at the University of Texas, says the Bahamas doesn't have the resources or expertise to respond to a major spill.

JORGE PINON: So it would be the United States that would have to come and take care of the remediation, take care of stopping the spill. So certainly we need something in paper that says who's going to be in command.

ALLEN: The possibility of an oil spill isn't a problem just for the Bahamas. The exploratory well is located just north of Cuba and close to the Gulf Stream. Dan Whittle with the Environmental Defense Fund says an oil spill would be a disaster for the entire region.

DAN WHITTLE: Because of the prevailing currents, it's likely that it would first, you know, ricochet off of Andros Island and then up to the southeast coast of Florida. It could also, though, affect Cuban waters and Cuban reefs as well. Everything is connected.

ALLEN: Eight years ago, Cuba's attempts to look for oil came up empty. Even so, industry experts say the geology indicates there should be oil reserves there. If this effort is successful in the Bahamas, it will increase the pressure to drill elsewhere in waters off Cuba and maybe even the coast of Florida. Greg Allen, NPR News, Miami.

(SOUNDBITE OF LEIFUR JAMES' "MUMMA DON'T TELL") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

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