SANTO DOMINGO Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said during an official visit here Saturday that the Dominican Republic become the location of a facility for refining crude produced by Venezuela's state-owned oil company PDVSA, AFP reported.

Chavez said he envisioned a network of refineries running across the Caribbean from the island of Curacao in the south, to the Dominican Republic.

"The Dominican Republic could well be one of the most important points in this system to process Venezuelan petroleum and supply the Caribbean market," Chavez told reporters.