SANTIAGO — The Dominican Republic’s top energy and mining official has drawn a clear line in the sand over resource development in one of the country’s most ecologically significant regions, confirming that full commercial mining will never be authorized in the Northern Mountain Range. In a face-to-face gathering with local community leaders and religious clergy hosted in Santiago, Energy and Mines Minister Joel Santos laid out the government’s official stance, clearing up widespread speculation about future extractive activity in the biodiverse highland area.
Santos stressed that there is no existing government policy, signed exploitation contract, or even active pending application that would clear the way for large-scale mineral extraction in the region. Any current work being carried out in the Northern Mountain Range is restricted exclusively to preliminary scientific research, designed to map the area’s geological characteristics and assess its potential mineral resources, he explained.
According to Santos, the exploration concessions currently held by operators do not grant any rights to commercial extraction. These permits only allow temporary access for technical work, including geological mapping, rock sampling, and other geoscientific surveys required to understand the region’s subsurface makeup.
Any future proposal to expand activity beyond exploration to full extraction would face a rigorous multi-step approval process, Santos noted. This would require separate technical reviews, mandatory comprehensive environmental impact assessments, and a final sign-off from the Dominican president before any work could move forward. The minister also emphasized that the government remains committed to full transparency and ongoing collaborative dialogue with all communities that would be affected by any potential future changes to mining rules in the region.
Santos also addressed calls from some stakeholders to revoke the existing exploration concessions, noting that unilateral revocation would open the Dominican government to costly international and domestic legal challenges, putting state assets and public finances at unnecessary risk.