Business News Americas: Shell: Altamira on track for Oct 2006 startup – Mexico: “Anglo-Dutch oil company Shell's Altamira liquefied natural gas (LNG) regasification terminal in Mexico's Tamaulipas state is on schedule to start operations in October 2006”: Posted 27 October 26, 2005
(BNamericas.com) - Anglo-Dutch oil company Shell's Altamira liquefied natural gas (LNG) regasification terminal in Mexico's Tamaulipas state is on schedule to start operations in October 2006, Shell's business development manager for the Americas, Anders Ekvall, told BNamericas.
"Most of the gas will come from Nigeria but it will be sourced out of our portfolio of LNG in the Atlantic Basin," Ekvall said on the sidelines of the IBC/BNamericas Energy Integration Congress in Santiago.
Mexico's state power company CFE will be the sole offtaker for a 15-year period, he said.
CFE awarded Shell a contract to supply 5 billion cubic meters a year of re-gasified LNG from Altamira starting in October 2006. The initial send-out capacity of the terminal will be 500 million cubic feet a day. Shell is responsible for supplying 75% of the LNG and France's Total will supply the remaining 25%. Shell holds a 50% interest in the terminal, Total 25% and Japanese company Mitsui 25%.
Shell subsidiary Gas del Litoral is responsible for storing and selling the gas.
COSTA AZUL Shell also has a 50% stake in US company Sempra Energy's 1 billion cubic feet-a-day Costa Azul LNG terminal being built on the Pacific coast in Mexico's Baja California state.
Sempra has won a contract to supply its share of the gas to CFE, beating out Shell, which also put in a bid, Ekvall said. Shell will sell its share of gas from the terminal to northwest Mexico and to the southwest US.
In the "first couple of years" LNG for the Baja terminal will come from Russia's Sakhalin project in which Shell is a majority partner, he said.
Sempra, which owns the terminal, is also in charge of building it. Site preparation has gotten underway and operations are scheduled for late 2008.
MANZANILLO CFE and state oil company Pemex plan to launch an international tender for a LNG re-gasification project at the port of Manzanillo on the Pacific coast, which could be another opportunity for Shell to enter the country's market.
"I'd like to do more business in Mexico [because] I think it is a very interesting place to do business. We've shown that by being in Baja," Ekvall said.
Just as with Altamira and Costa Azul, CFE will tender a 15-year gas supply contract for Manzanillo, which will have an initial capacity of 500 million cubic feet a day.
"It is a question of matching what is becoming available from supply sources with what the markets want. The challenge is there are so many [LNG] markets in the Asia-Pacific region," Ekvall said. - (BNamericas.com)
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