Santo Domingo, Dec 2 (EFE) Spanish experts have found traces of natural gas in the Dominican Republic’s marine subsoil but the existence of large quantities of the fuel cannot be confirmed for now, officials said.
The finding was the product of a project carried out over the past few months by a team from Madrid’s Complutense University and whose results were presented Monday.

“The novel thing, the interesting thing and what is encouraging is that this study has revealed that there are emissions of gas,” the head of the Dominican Republic’s mining agency Octavio Lopez said in a statement.

The study’s results “do not mean that we have gas in large quantities, it does not mean that we are rich in natural gas”, Lopez said.

Dominican officials should rely on scientific methods to determine the size of potential gas reserves, especially off the southern and eastern coasts, Lopez said.

Researchers studied the structure of the subsoil in the Dominican Republic’s offshore areas, looking for sediments that might hold hydrocarbons.

The San Pedro de Macoris basin and an area off the north coast, located in a triangle formed by Cuba, the Bahamas and the Dominican Republic, could hold hydrocarbons.