Want to start exporting natural gas to Asia
Mexico’s state-owned energy company, Petroleos Mexicanos, or Pemex, said it wants to develop a liquefied natural gas export terminal on the Pacific coast of Oaxaca and is seeking private funds to help pay for it.
The country, already a major exporter of crude oil, is trying to expand its energy sector under recently adopted laws that allow for new drilling and greater foreign investment. Mexican energy officials want to start exporting natural gas to Asia.
Mexico, already a major exporter of crude oil, is trying to expand its energy sector under recently adopted laws that allow for new drilling and greater foreign investment.
The $6 billion gas export plant would be the first of its kind in Mexico--a country whose own gas supply is so strained that it buys natural gas from the U.S. and moves it across the border on pipelines.
But Pemex officials speaking in Houston on Wednesday said the proposed export terminal near Salina Cruz, 450 miles southeast of Mexico City, could access existing gas fields in the southern part of the Gulf of Mexico. The plant is being designed to ship five million tons of liquefied gas out each year to markets in Asia and other points in Latin America, the company said. Construction could start in 2017, with the first shipment expected in 2021.
“We’re going to be having increasing production in Mexico in the upcoming years,” said Jorge de la Huerta, vice president of natural gas at Pemex Gas. “We think supply is not going to be an issue.”