New power plant moves forward as CFE promises natural gas in Yucatan

CFE evaluates options such as building a gas pipeline, a gas exchange with Pemex or a floating gas plant

Miguel Santiago Reyes Hernández, director general of CFEnergía, explains how natural gas might reach the Yucatan Peninsula. Photo: CFE

The Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) will bring natural gas to the Yucatan Peninsula in the next 12 months to generate electricity and avoid electrical failures in the region, as well as cost overruns for generating it with diesel.

The CFE also announced it is seeking bids for a new power plant in Merida.

The power plant, the Peninsula’s fourth, was a surprise promise when the president visited here following a series of widespread blackouts.

2019: Yucatán power plant promised

The new plant, one of six planned in Mexico, will use combined cycle / diesel technology and generate 500 MW of energy.

The other plants will be in Salamanca, San Luis Potosí, Baja California, Lerdo and San Luis Río.

The Merida power plant part of the plan to solve the state’s energy deficit.

“What we are guaranteeing is that in the next 12 months we would be having natural gas by any means,” said the director general of the subsidiary CFEnergía, Miguel Santiago Reyes Hernández.

CFE is studying all the options to bring energy and generate electricity at their plants that demand 310 million cubic feet per day in the southeast region of Mexico.

“We have already had the first approaches with Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex) and the National Center for Natural Gas Control (Cenagas) to see what the possibilities are the most feasible for the case of the Peninsula,” he said.

The surcharge of electricity generation in the Yucatan Peninsula due to the gas shortage has reached 10 million pesos (mdp) per day during the summer of 2019, revealed the National Center for Energy Control (Cenace).

One of the possibilities on the table is a 12 to 16 kilometer pipeline to the Mayakan gas pipeline with an extension of 12 to 16 kilometers, as the marine pipeline of IEnova and TC Energy does not reach the region directly, said Reyes.

Another possibility is a swap. Pemex would conduct gas exploration and production near the Mayakan pipeline and CFE would return an equivalent amount in another region of the country.

A third would be to hire a Floating Regasification and Storage Storage Unit (FSRU) that directs liquefied natural gas to the peninsula.

That idea was endorsed by Cenagas Director Elvira Daniel Kabbaz Zaga in August, who envisioned the vessel stationed in the port of Dos Bocas, Tabasco.

Source: Forbes Mexico

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