Here's the Prime Minister making the announcement:

Rt. Hon. Dean Barrow - Prime Minister
"We agreed, some time ago, to a policy decision that there will be a moratorium but there were those who wanted a more permanent ban and I've always said that I am completely against that and I am still against that. A moratorium is a different thing. Even though it is indefinite, the fact is that it is not permanent; it is not expressed to be permanent, so that you cannot rule out the possibility that at some point in the future, clearly not in the near future, when technology has advanced, there might be very easy ways of determining whether we do have resources where some people think there might be, without having to go through the sort of process that the environmentalists object to, that is the position now. We can't fetter parliament, we can't bind parliament. So when we pass the law, even though it's not expressed to be permanent, they would have wanted us to say well even to lift the non-permanent ban you will need to go through certain steps- they talked about a referendum- you can't do that, you can't put in a bill that a future Parliament will not be able to change this bill except if there is a referendum, no. That referendum provision in the bill is part of a bill that future Parliament can simply up-end, so there is clearly still the opening for somewhere down the road- I stress, it will no doubt be far down the road, if at all- for us to, not us, I will be long gone, but whoever is there to come back and say 'listen, lets' talk to people now because it appears by way of these new fangled methods of making an assessment, developing an estimate, there is lots of oil out there and should we not then have the conversation as to whether, given that we are a poor country, it might not be time to think about oil exploration.'"