GROUP FORMED TO DEVELOP BOLIVIA-BRAZIL GAS LINE

Brazil's Petroleo Brasileiro SA (Petrobras) has formed a group to develop a pipeline system linking Bolivian gas reserves with markets in Brazil.

Proposed is a $2 billion system running 2,000 miles from Santa Cruz, Bolivia, to Sao Paulo and Porto Alegre in southern Brazil. The project is to include an interconnect at Rio de Janeiro to serve markets there and in Belo Horizonte to the north.

The Bolivia-Brazil pipeline is to transport gas to an estimated 85 million customers who account for 75% of Brazil's yearly energy consumption and about 82% of the country's industrial production.

Chosen to help pipeline sponsor Petrobras with the project are members of the BTB group, which includes units of Broken Hill Pty. Co. Ltd. (BHP) of Australia, Tenneco Inc., Houston, and British Gas plc. The group is to review and validate specifically proposed components of the project.

Financing is to follow affirmation of the plan's feasibility, with construction to begin in 1995 and gas expected to start flowing in 1997.

BTB group members also are to help Petrobras lay plans to expand Brazil's gas infrastructure and develop electrical power generation, industrial, commercial, and residential markets for gas. As much as $5 billion could be spent on projects to expand and integrate Brazil's gas industry.

Last month, Enron Corp. agreed in a memorandum of understanding with Bolivia's Yacimientos Petroliferos Fiscales Bolivianos (YPFB) to form a joint venture to develop, finance, construct, and operate an export gas pipeline to Brazil (OGJ, July 25, p. 42). The status of that agreement could not be confirmed at presstime.

BTB GROUP ACTIVITIES

All three BTB group members are playing roles in similar plans to construct pipeline systems linking South American gas supplies with markets in Chile.

BHP Power Inc., a unit of BHP, recently signed an agreement with YPFB and Chile's Empresa Nacional de Petroleo (ENP) to study the feasibility of jointly developing a 1,100 km gas pipeline system to transport gas from Bolivia to gas fired power generation projects in northern Chile.

BHP maintains offices in Santa Cruz, Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo, Santiago, Buenos Aires, and Mendoza, Argentina.

The Tenneco Gas unit of Tenneco was chosen to be technical operator of a proposed 750 mile gas pipeline system linking supplies in Argentina to markets in Central Chile.

British Gas was named technical operator on the distribution portion of the Argentina-Chile gas line. The company is a leading shareholder in and technical operator of MetroGas--the Argentine gas distribution company serving 1.75 million customers in Buenos Aires--and a shareholder in Dock Sud power station at Buenos Aires.