Carlos Alvarado, president of the Republic, will modify the current hydrocarbons law to completely eliminate any possibility that allows the exploitation of oil or natural gas. This was confirmed by Alejandro Muñoz, executive president of the Costa Rican Petroleum Refinery (RECOPE), whose main challenge is the transformation of the entity towards alternative fuels. One of the main milestones of the “decarbonization” of the economy that the government wants to shape.
Currently, there are three executive decrees -ISSUED between 2011 and 2016- with which a moratorium was placed on exploration and exploitation. Last March, the Constitutional Chamber rejected an action against these orders and maintained the moratorium in effect until September 15th, 2021.
These same decrees preclude any action involving natural gas, a hydrocarbon rich in methane, but questioned for its polluting effects on the environment.
Muñoz explained that the road map marked by the government does not contemplate insisting more on a refinery. At the time, it was thought to promote a project of this kind to seek a “reduction” in fuel prices. Now, the direction points towards other types of energy.
So what will happen now? The refinery, according to the hierarch, when it begins its transformation process,
will continue to operate in its substantive part, supplying the country with fossil fuels, but will have the task – which did not exist before – to initiate the shift towards alternative fuels.”
The College of Geologists of Costa Rica, an organization that has always been against the moratorium to explore and exploit both resources, pointed out that the possibilities of finding these sources of energy in the Costa Rican territory are “very real” and were opposed to a total prohibition.
“There are several explorations that have been carried out since the middle of the last century in Costa Rica and in which oil was found, although not in commercial quantities. Similarly, several basins have a high potential for natural gas, which if used would greatly reduce the importation of hydrocarbons from other countries to the benefit of the internal trade balance of our country, “said Giorgio Murillo, president of the school.
Murillo stressed that the opposition is that
the country cannot sit on its riches with a growing and worrying fiscal deficit […] For an ideological environmentalism they want to eliminate what is likely to happen in about 25 years in the world (it may be much more), but Costa Rica does not have the resources to change to other technologies that do not even exist economically speaking[…] If we let others (as established by the Hydrocarbons Law) invest in finding or determining whether or not we have oil, at least the transport would not be by sea in ships but in the country by tubes. We could mitigate the oil bill if we allowed to explore and then exploit the natural gas that is known to exist in the country. It would allow us to stop importing the expensive hydrocarbon from other latitudes leaving the currency in the country.”