Texas-based floating LNG player Excelerate Energy said it has started natural gas deliveries to the Brazilian market via the Bahia LNG terminal in Salvador.
With this, Excelerate became the first private sector company to sell regasified LNG to customers in Brazil, it said in a statement on Thursday.
Brazil’s state-owned energy firm Petrobras said earlier this week it had transferred operations of the facility to the US firm.
The two firms signed a lease deal worth about $18.7 million for the Bahia LNG terminal in September.
Excelerate confirmed that it would use its 2020-built, 173,400-cbm Excelerate Sequoia to serve the Bahia facility.
The terminal has a regasification capacity of up to 700 million cubic feet per day and includes a 45 km pipeline with connections to two delivery points in the city of Salvador.
Through its unit, Excelerate Energy Comercializadora de Gas Natural, the firm expects to sell natural gas to a “diverse portfolio of customers” in this newly opened market.
The streamlined terminal operations provided by Excelerate at TR-BA represent the “latest example of the Excelerate flexible integrated terminal (E-FIT) offering, following the success of the Moheshkhali floating LNG terminal in Bangladesh,” it said.
Steven Kobos, president and chief executive of Excelerate said, “it is both a privilege and responsibility to provide natural gas to Brazil at this critical time.”
“I commend Petrobras for running a transparent tender process as part of the Brazilian government’s efforts to open up the Brazilian gas market,” he said.
Since 2012, Excelerate has provided regasification services in Brazil at Petrobras’ LNG terminals in Bahia, Guanabara Bay, and Pecem.
The company’s FSRU Experience broke an industry record for send-out capacity by reaching 1.06 billion cubic feet at the Guanabara Bay LNG terminal in 2020.