Tenders, not ‘whim’ to find Dominican Republic’s oil

Santo Domingo.- Energy and Mines minister Antonio IsaConde on Thursday said oil explorations will be carried out through a call fortenders and not simple concessions granted “at a whim,” to make the process moretransparent and efficient in keeping with the country’s interests.

He said the tenders will begin as soon as multinational contractorSchlumberger Surenco concludes the National Hydrocarbons Database currentlybeing compiled across the country.

"What we’ll do is that when we have that informationand the defined blocks worth exploring, we’ll tender the exploration contracts.No concessions are to be provided at a whim. Tenders will be based on, first,decide the profile of what we want and then the type of contract that we’llapply and that’s what’s going to be tendered, " Isa said.

Schlumberger Surenco won the tender for the NationalHydrocarbons Database in December 2014 and the work which began in March 2015 isslated to conclude in December, including the planning, scanning, raster,vectorization and indexing all relevant information relating to State- held oil,as well as process and reinterpret all 2D seismic information.