Merida, Yucatan — By next year, homeowners in the north will fire up their stoves with natural gas.
That will allow savings of up to 25 percent for households, said Engie, the French company piping in the gas. In addition, businesses could save up to 60 percent in energy cost, they said.
Residential homes with gas appliances up until now have largely used propane, stored in tanks, to run stoves and water heaters. Electric energy costs have cut aggressively into businesses’ bottom line.
At the Expo Foro de Energía Yucatan 2019, two companies announced that the service is already authorized and at the moment they are in the process of obtaining state and municipal permits.
An Engie representative, Ana Ludlow Echeverría, said that there is an investment of US$22 million to supply natural gas to 18,000 homes and businesses in Mérida and Uman in the coming years.
“It seeks to bring the benefit of natural gas to customers who are more than 25 kilometers away from the existing transport and distribution pipelines,” said the spokeswoman.
In the press conference, representatives of the company said that natural gas will always be much more competitive by pipeline than propane, which is delivered to individual customers by truck.
The French utility company already distributes natural gas to 500,000 residential and business customers in the State of México, Jalisco, Puebla, Tlaxcala, Tampico, Tamaulipas and Querétaro.
The CEO of Engie México said the company’s goal is to reach one million customers.
The company’s distribution director, Álvaro Corona, told the Notimex wire service that plans to provide natural gas to Mérida are well under way, and that Campeche, Hidalgo and Colima are next.
Engie started distributing natural gas in Mexico 20 years ago.
In five years, Engie invested more than US$2 billion in new projects in Mexico.
With information from Diario de Yucatan, Notimex
