Bolivian government authorizes gas pipeline to Brazil
Copyright 2001 Reuters
December 6, 2001
LA PAZ - Bolivia gave authorization to Sociedad Transierra, an international consortium of energy companies, to build a 280-mile (450 km) pipeline to Brazil, a regulatory official said yesterday.
Sociedad Transierra, made up of Brazil's state energy company Petrobras , Spain's Repsol-YPF and the Franco-Belgian TotalFinaElf , requested a permit to build the pipeline 14 months ago.The pipeline, linking gas deposits in southern Bolivia to a deposit on the border with Brazil, will make it possible to fulfill a contract to supply part of the 30 million cubic meters of natural gas to Brazil daily.
"The pipeline is absolutely vital to transporting gas reserves from the south," Arturo Castannos, corporate director of Petrobras' Bolivian unit, told reporters recently.
The permit to build the pipeline was approved on Thursday of last week by the Superintendency of Hydrocarbons, said the official, who asked not to be named.
Construction of the pipeline is set to begin in mid-January and will transport 22 million cubic meters of gas a day to Brazil.
The government regulatory agency rejected environmental complaints by indigenous groups and technical objections from Transredes, a consortium that operates the pipelines of the formerly state-owned energy company YPFB, the official said, without providing further details.
The pipeline will carry gas from of key deposits at the San Alberto and San Antonio fields in the department of Tarija, near the border with Argentina.