For over 100 years people have been searching for oil in the Dominican Republic but with no great results. The legal and institutional structures that revolve around the explorations seem to be as viscous as the oil that is the black gold everybody wants. According to El Caribe, 18 companies have searched for oil in the Dominican Republic. For some 30 years, since drilling began in 1904, thousands of barrels have been extracted and exported, but nobody knows where to or the quality of the oil. Records do show that many thousands of barrels were taken out of the country.
In 1979, a Venezuelan mission said that petroleum prospects in the country were “promising” because the country has the basic geological formations according to geophysicist Myrfin Jones Evans and geologist Jose Luis Padron.
At the present time there are three companies drilling for oil in three different regions of the country, and all three have renewed their concession licenses in order to continue their work. The Petrolera Once-Once is concentrating in the Cibao Valley in the area around San Francisco de Macoris, Villa Rivas and Sanchez. Maleno Oil Company is looking in the Enriquillo watershed area in the province of Independencia. Murfin Dominicanca is drilling near Azua and Punta Salinas. The head of the Mining Office, Octavio Lopez, certainly does not want to create “illusions” or create false hope as happened after the exploration at Charco Largo in 1981. Rene Soler, a mining engineer with experience in Venezuela, told reporters that “the country has petroleum, but not for export.” According to the engineer, there is sufficient oil for the Dominican Republic to be nearly self-sufficient. Although reports vary, the daily consumption of petroleum products is somewhere between 140,000 and 150,000 barrels per day. The Dominican Refinery has a capacity to refine as much as 52,000 barrels a day. While current exploration is going on, the Dominican Refinery has announced proposals from Petrobras to drill exploratory well in the sea off the Dominican coast and the Mining Office is looking at agreements with Ecuador, Venezuela and Spain. There are even negotiations to buy natural gas from Qatar.