Colombian gas distributor Promigas has revealed plans to increase regasification capacity at the country’s only FSRU-based LNG import facility in Cartagena.
Sociedad Portuaria El Cayao (SPEC LNG) operates the terminal in which Promigas has a 51 percent stake while Dutch Vopak holds the rest.
The 170,000-cbm Hoegh Grace FSRU, owned by Hoegh LNG Partners and managed by parent Hoegh LNG, started serving the LNG import facility back in 2016. It supplies regasified LNG to the national network via a 9.2km pipeline.
These supplies go to local power plants.
Currently, the terminal has a capacity of about 400 million cubic feet per day.
However, Promigas said in a statement it plans to raise the capacity to 450 million cubic feet per day in 2022 to cater to a growing domestic demand.
In addition, it could increase the capacity even further to 600 million cubic feet per day by 2025.
The firm said it has already started technical studies to determine the feasibility of expansion works.
Based on the evaluations and considering the current and projected natural gas transportation infrastructure, Promigas aims to develop the expansion in phases, aligned with transport network capacity and demand, SPEC LNG’s general manager Jose Maria Castro said in the statement.
He said the project offers Colombia “an efficient solution, with low risk and development costs.”
Castro added that another advantage of the project is that it is “very close” to the LNG sources of the region such as Trinidad and Tobago and the United States.