Costa Rica’s Ombudsman, (known in Spanish as the Defensoria de La Habitantes) Ofelia Taitelbaum is suspicious of the objectivity of a Chinese study of the local petroleum refinery RECOPE.

She feels that the company, KBC, charged with conducting the marketing study, and HQCBC, tasked with a feasibility study, just may be more than a little friendly with the Chinese state petroleum giant, CNPC.

The two studies are part of a $1.4 billion project to increase RECOPE’s Moin refining output from is current 18,000 barrels daily to 65,000 barrels to meet future needs.

But, after participating in a forum sponsored by an arm of RECOPE, Taitelbaum heard some things that alarmed her. She has asked the RECOPE hierarchy to send her a report if the KBC and the HQCEC are by any chance subsidiaries of the Chinese petroleum company.

The latter owns CNPCE, the firm that contracted the studies. She has asked, moreover, about ecentual commercial ties with Worley Parsons, the company contracted at a cost of $60 million for basic engineering of the project and supervision of construction.

Parsons was charged with validating the feasibility study, incorporating the observations of the consulting firm Honeywell. RECOPE has limited its response to Taitelbaum’s doubts to simply admitting that it is drafting a response to her questions.

She reminded RECOPE that one of the conditions set by the Comproller General’s office was that the feasibility study was to be done by a completely independent entity.

As a final objective of her probe the Ombudsman would like to know if the final result of the project will be to lower fuel prices here. Government officials have said yes, but Taitelbaum is in no mood to take their word for it.