TransCanada Corp. continues to have success bidding for expansions to Mexico’s natural gas transmission infrastructure, winning projects in late 2012 for new pipelines in northwestern Mexico valued at $1.4 billion.
Mexico’s state-owned electric utility, Comisión Federal de Electricidad (CFE), awarded a $1 billion contract to build, own and operate the 30-inch, 329-mile Topolobampo Pipeline from El Encino, outside Chihuahua, to Topolobampo on the Gulf of California coast. Capacity will be 670 million cubic feet (MMcf) per day with completion scheduled for third-quarter 2016.
Connecting to it will be the $400 million Mazatlan Pipeline, a 24-inch, 257-mile system with a 202 MMcf per day capacity. It will parallel Mexico’s Pacific coast from Topolobampo to Mazatlán. Completion would come in fourth-quarter 2016. Construction of the pipelines is supported by 25-year CFE transportation service contracts.
The projects follow other CFE awards for two other transmission systems, the 193- mile, 30-inch, 500 MMcf per day Guadalajara Pipeline, completed in 2011, and the Tamazunchale Pipeline that moves gas from Veracruz state on the Gulf of Mexico to San Luis Potosí. The Guadalajara line connects Mexico’s second-largest city with an LNG terminal on the Pacific coast near Manzanillo. The plant gasifies LNG shipped from Peru.
TransCanada has been involved in Mexico’s gas transmission business since the 1990s when it received contracts from Mexico’s state petroleum company, Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex) to build and operate the first Mexican gas pipelines not owned by Pemex. Those systems were later sold.
The Topolobampo Pipeline will be a particularly challenging system to build as it will cross the rugged Sierra Madre mountains, Dean Ferguson, vice president of U.S. pipelines-west and Mexico, tells Midstream Business. “TransCanada’s project team is experienced at designing and constructing new pipeline infrastructure through some of the most challenging terrain in North America, such as the Guadalajara Pipeline, as well the Northern Border pipeline built through the Badlands of North America.”
“We are pleased to be working with the government of Mexico on new natural gas infrastructure that will bring its cleanerburning natural gas to businesses and residents,” says Russ Girling, TransCanada’s president and chief executive. “These new projects build on our experience developing safe and reliable pipelines in Mexico and across
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