Peru Inagurates Huge Natural Gas Export Plant, Bolivia Has Its Dignity

Peru's massive Liquid Natural Gas plant I talked aboout in an earlier post,  was just inagurated.  The project cost close to 4 billion dollars;  it is South America's first Natural Gas Liquification facility.  As Peruvian President Alan Garcia noted it is the "largest" "single project" ever made in Peru, as well as the largest foreign investment ever in the country.    The facility will receive gas from the Camisea gas fields, process and store it as LNG and ship in special tankers to customers overseas.    Though, there are doubts there is enough gas in Peru to sustain exports and meet national gas demands in the country, there is an increase in production and planned investments in the hydrocarbons sector to increase gas production.

video of Alan Garcia talking about how important this is.


Bolivia next door, actually has no issues with the size of its gas reserves.  But, it does not have investments necessary to raise production, much less the capacity in anyway shape or form to export LNG.  Its best chance to do that was through the Pacific LNG project that led to the infamous "gas wars".   But, the problem is that while Bolivia became the "Bermuda Triangle" of hydrocarbons in South America, both its neighbors and the industry as a whole have evolved.   Peru, Venezuela, and Brazil are seriously investing in producing LNG for export.  At the same time  Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Uruguay are investing in regasification facilities to receive LNG shipments.   In other words countries with large markets for gas are looking at buying it off ships, instead of through pipelines - which was Bolivia's theoretical strength.