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A Nation Runs on Natural Gas |
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By Adalberto Marcondes*
Brazil is beginning construction of a 5,000-km pipeline to transport natural gas imported from Bolivia. By the end of the decade, this fossil fuel will cover 15 percent of the country's energy consumption.
SAO PAULO - Natural gas-generated electrical plants in Brazil are reinforcing the deep transformations of the country's energy matrix. By the end of this decade, natural gas could cover 15 percent of energy consumption.
In the coming months, construction will begin on the National Unification Gas Pipeline, GASUN, to extend more than 5,000 kilometers. The pipeline will carry natural gas imported from neighboring Bolivia to a portion of the northern Amazon region and to the semi-arid Northeast.
The project received a boost when the state-run oil giant Petrobrás announced the discovery of a major natural gas deposit in the geographic bowl of Santos, in Sao Paulo state.
It thus became necessary to come up with a new destination for the Bolivian gas. The pipeline to southern and southeastern Brazil is already in operation.
The first stage of construction -- the entire project budgeted at 2.48 billion dollars -- is to conclude in 2007. The first stretch of GASUN will be a branch of the existing Brazil-Bolivia pipeline.
The GASUN portion will begin in Mimoso, in the southwest state of Mato Grosso do Sul, and will join the Brazil-Bolivia pipeline. Form there it will run towards Brasilia, passing through Goiania.
According to official figures, that stage will have a price tag of 634 million dollars and will create 1,300 jobs directly, with the potential of another 31,000 indirect jobs once the construction is complete.
The most costly portion will be the central-north branch, which is to connect the central state of Goiás with the northeastern Maranhão with 2,260 km of pipeline. It is slated to cost 1.1 billion dollars and will pass through Palmas and Belém.
The entire natural gas pipeline should be complete by 2026, and the governments of the states involved estimate that more than 7,000 people will be involved in its construction.
Once natural gas is available in the northeastern states, such as Pará, Tocantins, Maranhão and Piauí -- among Brazil's poorest -- it will contribute to the creation of jobs through its utilization as a source of energy with low environmental impact. For example, state agencies have already been set up to distribute the gas.
"There are high expectations in this state," says Piauí's secretary of industry and commerce, Jorge Lopes.
The state's development depends on the availability of more energy resources in the future, such as natural gas, according to Lopes. After being assured that they will have reliable energy supplies, several ceramic factories expressed willingness to set up shop in Piauí, said the official.
Gas-related expectations are also high in Maranhão, especially in terms of strategic projects like a new Vale do Rio Doce plant, one of the world's leading mining companies.
Another destination of the natural gas will be the Maranhão Aluminum Consortium, comprising the transnational firms Alcoa, Alcan and BHP Billiton, and one of the biggest aluminum manufacturing complexes in the world.
The complex has enormous energy needs, and is supplied by the Tucurui hydroelectric dam. Civil society groups charge that electricity is sold to multinationals and that there are no benefits for the local population.
But Brazil's northern states have their eye on attracting industries from the south and southeast, where operating costs are higher than they would be in the zones to benefit from the gas pipeline.
On another front, so far there are no studies on the environmental impacts of establishing so much new industry in areas with fragile ecosystems, like the eastern Amazon and the semi-arid Northeast.
But the option of natural gas for industries that are major energy consumers -- steel, chemicals, ceramics, cement, paper and cellulose -- is seen as environmental progress.
Some of these industries still rely on firewood or coal. Refitting their energy systems to natural gas would significantly reduce pollutants, says Gilberto Jannuzzi, a scientist at the State University of Campinas, near Sao Paulo.
GASUN is part of an ambitious project of Petrobrás, a plan for the widespread use of natural gas, expanding this fuel's use in the country's energy matrix.
Initially, the plan was drawn up to attend to the energy demands of factories included in the Priority Program of Thermoelectric Generators, created after the energy crisis and rationing in 2001.
The program became an important tool for ensuring energy supplies for the industrial sector. Part of this is the expanded use of natural gas in vehicles.
The aim is to connect the entire Brazilian territory to a network of gas pipelines in a relatively short time.
Within a decade, this fuel could represent 15 percent of Brazil's energy consumption, according to estimates cited by Ildo Sauer, director of the Petrobrás division on natural gas and energy.
* Adalberto Marcondes is a Tierramérica contributor.
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