Dominican Republic Energy
The Tavera Dam
Courtesy Inter-American Development Bank
The cost and the availability of energy became major
impediments to development in the 1970s and the 1980s. An
oil
importing nation, the Dominican Republic saw its import
bill for
petroleum multiply tenfold in absolute terms during the
1970s.
Although oil prices eased during the 1980s, the country
faced a
new energy crisis as a result of a critical shortage of
electrical-generating capacity. Inadequate supplies of
electricity resulted by the late 1980s in frequent power
outages,
frustrated consumers, and disrupted productive activities.
The country's aggregate consumption of energy was low,
even
by Latin American standards. For example, Costa Rica
consumed
more than half again the amount that the Dominican
Republic did
on a per capita basis in the 1980s. The energy consumed by
the
nation came from a variety of sources: petroleum and
petroleum
products (49 percent), wood (26 percent), biomass (20
percent),
hydropower (3 percent), and coal (2 percent). The country
continued to be dependent on imported crude oil and
related
petroleum products, and its narrow domestic energy
resource base
satisfied barely half the nation's energy demand. The
potential
supply of hydropower, the most promising resource, was
estimated
at 1,800 megawatts (MW), but less than a quarter of that
amount
was being tapped in 1989. Wood and charcoal use was
constrained
by the small size of the country's remaining forests.
Biomass,
mostly bagasse from sugarcane residue, was getting more
use but
had limited potential as a fuel. Deposits of lignite
(brown
coal), were known to exist in the Samaná Peninsula in
undetermined amounts, but exploitation of this resource
was
considered unprofitable in the late 1980s. Nontraditional
energy
resources, such as geothermal and solar power, were also
being
considered, but they, too, promised little return on
potential
investment in the 1980s.
United States, Venezuelan, and Canadian oil companies
began
prospecting for oil in Dominican soil in the early
twentieth
century; these efforts met with little success, however.
Only
small deposits were known to exist at Charco Largo in the
1980s,
and the prospect of new oil finds appeared poor.
Consequently,
the country imported crude oil and certain special
petroleum
products that could not be refined locally. Mexico and
Venezuela, under the
San José Accord (see Glossary),
met about
one-third of
the country's oil needs at concessional rates. Under
pressure
from urban consumers, the government traditionally had
subsidized
gasoline prices; sudden price increases, like those of
1984 and
1989, often triggered unrest.
The Dominican Electric Company (Corporación Dominicana
de
Electricidad--CDE), a parastatal that replaced a private
company
in 1955, operated the country's national electrical system
in
1989. The CDE supplied two-thirds of the country's 1,573
MW
electrical capacity in 1986. Private and public
production--used
to power mines, sugar mills, cement factories, other
industries,
and residences--accounted for the balance. Oil-based
thermal
plants generated most of the nation's electricity (62
percent).
Smaller amounts were produced by gas turbines (14
percent),
hydroelectric dams (14 percent), and other sources (10
percent).
Residences consumed the most electricity (41 percent),
followed
by industry (28 percent), the public sector (19 percent),
and
commercial users (12 percent). Prices ranged from the low
subsidized rates afforded households to the much higher
tariffs
the CDE charged its large commercial customers. Only 38
percent
of Dominican homes had electricity in the late 1980s, a
low
percentage by Latin American standards; for example, 54
percent
of Jamaicans had such access.
Generally dilapidated and outdated, the CDE's
facilities
suffered from inadequate maintenance and inefficient,
politicized
financial management. For example, approximately one-third
of all
electricity generated in 1988 was lost because of
maintenance
problems or unauthorized use. Not surprisingly, by the
late 1980s
the country was facing a huge deficit in electrical
capacity that
was substantially hindering economic development. Some
areas
suffered as many as 500 hours of outages a year, which
often
caused damage to appliances because of drops in voltage
and other
irregularities. Because of this unreliable service, many
businesses, especially in free zones, ran their own
generators.
With assistance from the World Bank and the Japanese
government,
the CDE attempted to improve efficiency by increasing
tariffs,
upgrading infrastructure, and expanding capacity. The
Balaguer
administration in the late 1980s considered privatizing
portions
of the CDE's operations. Nevertheless, demand was expected
to
outpace supply for years to come.
Data as of December 1989
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