BOGOTA: Colombian investors are developing a proposal to install an LNG regasification plant on the Pacific coast in anticipation of a natural gas shortage.
Colombia is already working to install an import terminal near Cartagena on the Caribbean coast.
Midstream firm TGI, a subsidiary of Bogota-based utility EEB, is among the companies that could take part in the new project that would be built at the Pacific port of Buenaventura, an executive close to the project tells Argus.
Colombia’s energy planning agency UPME says a 400mn ft3/d LNG import terminal could be installed on the Pacific coast by 2021.
A Pacific coast terminal would benefit from the expansion of the Panama Canal, which will allow LNG vessels to transit starting next year, around the same time that commercial US LNG exports will get underway.
UPME estimates the costs associated with the project at around $288mn, with $237.5mn for the Buenaventura regasification plant and the remainder for pipeline infrastructure and associated facilities.
Sociedad Portuaria El Cayao (Spec), a consortium led by Colombian distributor Promigas with a 51pc stake, says it plans to launch the Caribbean LNG import terminal by December 2016.
Private equity fund Baru LNG holds 49pc of Spec.
The Caribbean terminal would allow thermal power generators on the coast to import LNG during periods of drought, but the imports look likely to become a permanent feature of Colombia´s energy matrix. The country´s oil and gas chamber ACP believes gas demand will outstrip supply on the Caribbean coast starting in 2017.
Grupo Termico, a consortium of generators with total installed capacity of 1,834MW, will negotiate future LNG supply to service the Caribbean terminal.
ACP has warned that Colombia will experience a 190mn ft3/d deficit across the country in 2018 if no more reserves are added.
Colombia is currently exporting a small volume of pipeline gas to neighboring Venezuela. But Caracas says it will reverse the flow with about 40mn ft3/d of exports to Colombia starting in January 2016, based on the imminent launch of offshore production from the Perla field.
Around 80mn ft3/d is currently flowing to Venezuela from Guajira province gas fields in northern Colombia through the Antonio Ricaurte cross-border pipeline, according to UPME.
