Urgent: Dominican Republic must be region´s logistics, energy hub

Santo Domingo.- AESDominicana president Edwin De los Santos on Wednesday called for the country tolay the foundations to be placed on the region´s competitiveness map by becomingthe region´s logistics and energy hub.

Speaking to mark thedispatch of tanker number 25,000 from AES Dominicana´s natural gas terminalinaugurated in 2010, the executive said the event reaffirms its status as areal alternative for Dominican Republic array of fuels, for its competitiveprices and the positive impact on the environment, industries, businesses andvehicles that use it.

"For us in the AESDominicana we´re very pleased to celebrate this milestone. Today, around 70 industries,five power companies -in addition to AES units- and more than 15,000 vehicleshave a supply from this relatively new fuel for the country, meeting thehighest standards of safety and quality during shipping and handling," saidDe los Santos during a ceremony attended by government officiasl including Industryand Commerce minister José Del Castillo and natural gas distributors andcustomers.

De los Santosstressed that to make the country an energy and logistics center, takingadvantage of Dominican Republic´s unique geographical location, a strategic public-privateand private-private alliances is needed to spur a constant generation of valueamong all stakeholders.

He said the continuousencouragement for innovation is the key to respond quickly to the dramaticchanges which occur every day in the global energy markets.

He said since the worldmoves hundreds of billions of dollars in investment yearly, the country musthave the platform to secure its slice of the of global foreign directinvestment pie.

"I wouldhighlight the five pioneers distributors and promoters and developers of thismarket: Tropigas Natural, as well as Linea Clave Internacional, the firstcompany that promoted this fuel in the retail market, and which is activelyfollowed by other distributors as are Soluciones Gas Natural, Propagas andPlatergas, whom I thank for their confidence in AES Dominicana as a supplier,"De los Santos said in a press release.

"At AES we´vetaken the future of natural gas very seriously and thinking about that we´reimplementing a strategy to continue to expand both locally and in the CentralAmerica and Caribbean regions with the design of our facilities with an investmentestimated at US$25 million, so you can get smaller shipments for distributionto nearby islands and a second tank to meet the demand for storage and allowbetter distribution logistics," De los Santos Said

He announced the finalpreparations to start construction of a gas pipeline linking the AES Andres terminalto San Pedro de Macoris (east), with the possibility of converting up to 1,000megawatts of electricity from plants that use other fuels.