For nearly 15 years in the Dominican Republic the issue of the expansion of the natural gas. In 2007, the government of then-President Leonel Fernández tried for several years to ensure that public transport, headed by the Metropolitan Office of Bus Services (OMSA), will use this fuel.
Yesterday, the vice minister of Internal Trade of the Ministry of Industry, Commerce and MSMEs (MICM), Ramón Pérez Fermín, said that this institution is in a process of relaunching and expanding the natural gas in the country.
“The relaunch of natural gas for us it is a topic that we have been developing for two years”, he indicated.
He observed that, as there has been a crisis with the rise in the price of natural gas Internationally, added to the war between Russia and Ukraine, this fuel has had a double effect.
“All of this will eventually take its normal rhythm, and that is why we continue without pause deploying all our projects of natural gas and those who are not natural gas”, he expressed.
Said there is nothing different to what they have been developing for two years.
“The natural gas It is a less polluting fuel. We have bet on the relaunch,” said the official after the head of the MICM expressed this week that the entity will be facilitating the channels for the installation of natural gas in all seasons fuels of the Dominican Republic.
“We continue working on our agenda to increase the presence of natural gas in the country, because historically it is a fuel with very competitive prices”, he pointed out.
He said that in the Dominican Republic there are more than 25 stations that dispatch natural gas to the public.
He clarified that the investment to install a station natural gas is much higher than that of the fuels traditional because the teams have much higher security precepts.
Leonel Fernández and natural gas
The then president Fernandezon November 15, 2007, addressed the nation and expressed that, given the rise in the price of a barrel of oil (96 dollars), it would give impetus to the development of the oil market. natural gas in the public and private transport.
Based on this program, Fernández explained, in principle, the change of use of natural gas of 80 OMSA buses that at that time used diesel.
In addition, they proposed the conversion to natural gas 2,000 concho vehicles that used liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) and another 400 units of the Police and the National Army.
“It is a general criterion among technicians and specialists that over time the natural gas Vehicular fuel will be the preferred fuel in the area of transportation, because it is the cheapest, even cheaper than LPG, and the one that pollutes the environment the least,” Fernández specified at the time.
In 2007, the barrel of Petroleum was quoted in the international markets to $96, an “unprecedented” increase.
Opponent reactions
Despite the plans that the Fernández government had with the expansion of the natural gasin 2011 the government came face to face with a group of businessmen from the sector, who were against it.
According to a publication by Free Dailythe former president of the National Association of Gasoline Retailers, Ignacio Espaillat, told President Fernández that the natural gas It was not profitable due to the cost of its initial investment, which was around 32 million pesos.
The above opinion was supported, in part, by Arturo Santanaof you propagate.
For these positions, Fernández, immediately, said he felt “thunderstruck” because until that moment no businessman had done such criticism.
“Let’s agree on what needs to be done to make this work and give us a timeframe for it to work, and if you think it’s not profitable, then surrender your licensethat we will look for people who consider that it is profitable, because it cannot be like that”, he affirmed Fernandez at that moment.
assured that this alternative fuel is the only one that allows mitigating the impact of the volatility of international commodity prices. fuels and that the government was interested in providing facilities with the banks.
