Doha, Qatar.-Dominican Republic’s plans to develop an oil industry has piqued the interest ofenergy and petroleum sector business leaders and officials of Qatar, said Energyand Mines minister Antonio Isa Conde during a recent visit to speak at the XVI DohaForum.

Public andprivate sector representatives listened to Isa’s presentation on his country’s plansto start developing an industry to explore and exploit hydrocarbons.

For his part,Qatari Energy and Industry minister Mohammed Bin Saleh Al Sada, who met withthe Dominican official, stressed Dominican Republic’s importance on its strategiclocation and state Doha’s willingness tosupport the Caribbean nation, which will soon tender oil blocs to develop the industry.

Earlier thismonth the Energy and Mines Ministry presented the first National Hydrocarbons Database(BNDH), available on the Web and already has records of more than 19,000 kilometersof 2D seismic lines, among other information.

Lauds DominicanGovernment for information available

Isa also metwith Qatar Petroleum president and CEO, Saad Sherida Al-Kaabi, who congratulatedthe Dominican delegation on the amount of information available, considered a firststep to attract investment because the start of seismic data collection fromscratch is very costly.

Theofficial also met with Qatar Mining president and CEO Mohammed Al-Shahwani.

InFebruary, during the process of gathering the BNDH data, Isa had also visited Trinidadand Tobago where he aroused investor interest.

Doha forum

Major economicand financial print and TV media in Qatar aired the Dominican official’spresentations at the XVI Doha Forum, on the Caribbean country’s hydrocarbonindustry.