The Bahamas looks poised to greenlight drilling for oil in waters about 150 miles from South Florida just months after Hurricane Dorian ravaged the island nation and caused a major spill on Grand Bahama island.

The Bahamas Petroleum Company (BPC) hopes to drill its first exploratory well in an area 100 miles southwest of the nations Andros Island as early as next month, the company said in a recent regulatory filing . The Perseverance #1 venture would coincide with the 10-year anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, which started in April 2010 and released more than 200 million gallons of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico.

There is currently no offshore drilling in Bahamian waters.

Perseverance #1 has the potential to open a world-class, new-frontier basin offshore Bahamas, less than 200 miles from the worlds largest hydrocarbon market/infrastructure, Simon Potter, the chief executive officer of BPC, said in a statement accompanying the regulatory filing. He called the planned well one of the premier prospects that could be drilled globally this year with the potential to transform the revenue-generating capacity of the Bahamian economy.

The nation and its tourism-dependent economy took a major hit last September when Hurricane Dorian, a powerful Category 5 storm that scientists say was strengthened by planetary warming , slammed into the Abaco Islands and then stalled over Grand Bahama for 30 hours. The storm killed at least 67 people, left hundreds more unaccounted for and caused an estimated $3.4 billion in damage .