Recope insists on venturing into cleaner energies

This is a machine translation of the Legislative Assembly release originally published in Spanish.

The Executive President of Refinería Costarricense de Petróleo, RECOPE, Juan Manuel Quesada, insisted before the members of the National Energy Sector Commission, on the need to reform the law that governs this dependency so that it can venture into the commercialization of other clean energies that help humanity reduce its carbon footprint.

According to Quesada, hydrocarbons are just one part of oil and its derivatives such as gasoline, diesel and LPG gas, but there are also other hydrocarbons such as biofuel, ethanol, biodiesel, biogas, hydrogen, biomethane, natural gas and synthetic fuels, which are much cleaner and into which it cannot venture because the law does not allow it.

The official defended the very important model maintained by the country due to its association with economies of scale, the contributions it makes in payment of taxes, other quasi-fiscal contributions and licenses, as well as in the guarantee of quality of the product that it supplies to the population.

Recope does not have monopoly revenues and therefore the opening of the market in this field is not considered appropriate, because it does not behave as such, by not appropriating the benefits of users, but rather it is regulated by Aresep and the principle of service at cost and it does not cash in, but everything that is generated is invested in the national fuel system, in operating and guaranteeing the energy security of the country.

For Quesada, one of the most important steps in which the country has lagged behind is in mixing gas with gasoline.

According to Quesada, another of the changes it is proposing is to be able to sell aircraft a different type of LPG fuel than that currently offered, which they do not buy here because it is more expensive. At this point, he said that it is waiting for Aresep to provide it with a fee to start marketing.

Deputy Sofía Guillén Pérez asked about the impact that Recope has in relation to the fiscal rule, what could be the implications of the opening of the fuel market in the country, as well as the recommendations and possible improvements in the field of energy.

Quesada responded that the institution has a series of projects and investments in mind, as well as fairly deteriorated infrastructure that requires the investment of resources, but all this is limited by the ceiling that the fiscal rule places on it.

Parliamentarian Kattia Cambronero Aguiluz questioned the position assumed by the Recope authorities, since she considers that the proposal for an energy transition lies in an analysis of the behavior of the national market and what the energy alternatives may be.

For deputy Luis Fernando Mendoza Jiménez, a framework law must also link the supply of fuels with growth in demand, since very slow progress is being made with other fields such as electric cars.