Arturo Martínez Moya, a former president of REFIDOMSA, the Dominican Oil Refinery, contends that the country may have paid some US$80 million too much for its oil imports. He says that a report prepared by the Economy and Development Foundation commissioned by REFIDOMSA revealed that when compared with Shell’s purchases of oil in the Caribbean using posting prices, the Refinery paid an extra US$21 million for the same amount for four consecutive years starting in 1991. The Shell Company has a 50 percent stake in REFIDOMSA.
He says that during his tenure as the company’s president, he tried to change this situation by introducing some changes to make the process more “transparent.” He says that all his efforts in this direction proved futile because the Dominican government does not exert real control over the company.