MEXICO CITY – Mexican authorities have announced plans build five new natural gas pipelines, including one from the Texas Permian Basin to Ojinaga, Chihuahua, Mexico, according to the Latin America Herald Tribune.
Enrique Ochoa, chief executive officer of La Comision Federal de Electricidad (CFE), or federal electricity commission, said in a statement that the state-owned electric utility and the energy secretariat will oversee the project valued at about $2.5 billion.
Ochoa said at a recent energy and gas forum at the CFE’s Technological Museum that the first gas pipeline would cost around $400 million and run from Ojinaga to El Encino in the northern state of Chihuahua.
The second conduit will stretch from El Encino to the Laguna zone in the state of Durango, while the third will transport gas from Waha, Texas, to Samalayuca, Chihuahua. The Waha oil and gas field and collection area is located near the Pecos County farming community of Coyonosa.
A fourth gas pipeline will run from Waha to Ojinaga and the fifth will stretch from Ehrenberg, Arizona, to San Luis Rio Colorado, Sonora, Mexico.
Mexico is looking to build more pipelines to boost the “reliability of the country’s natural gas transport system,” Ochoa said.
Deputy Electricity Secretary Cesar Hernandez said the CFE has experience working with the private sector on natural gas transport infrastructure projects, which he added would give Mexicans access to that fuel “at competitive prices.”
Under the energy sector overhaul it adopted last December, the administration of Mexico President Enrique Peña Nieto plans to boost natural gas output from a current level of 5.7 billion cubic feet per day to 8 billion cfd by 2018 and to more than 10.4 billion cfd by 2025.
That higher production would enable Mexico to be an exporter as opposed to an importer of natural gas.
It would also for the first time bring natural gas to the border communities of Presidio, Texas and Ojinaga, Mexico, opening economic development opportunities for manufacturing plants and facilities.
So far, there’s been no indication of where the pipeline is to be sited.
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