Mexico’s Comision Reguladora de Energa (CRE) granted a permitto Transportadora de Gas Natural de Baja California, a subsidiarycompany of U.S.-based Sempra Energy International, for transportinggas to the Presidente Juarez thermoelectric station in Rosarito,Baja California. The pipeline is part of a ten-year gas supplycontract valued at close to a billion dollars. Enova and PacificEnterprises (now combined to form Sempra) won the bid for gas tosupply the generating station. The projected 30-inch diameterpipeline will span 23 miles and is designed to operate with acompression capacity of 810 MMcf/d and operative capacity of 270MMcf/d.

Gas will be supplied from Southern California to the SanDiego-Tijuana area of the U.S.-Mexico border connection by anothersubsidiary, San Diego Gas and Electric (SDG&ampE). Sempra, alongwith the Mexican company Pr›xima, are the distributors in theMexicali and Chihuahua geographic zones, where they will investnearly US$64 million in 994 miles of pipelines that will reachnearly 77,000 residential, industrial and commercial users over thenext five years.

Last August, Sempra was awarded a 10-year agreement by theMexican Federal Electric Commission (CFE) to supply gas to thePresidente Juarez plant. The company is to provide a completeenergy supply package for the power plant, including up to 300MMcf/d of gas, transportation services in the United States andconstruction of the 23-mile pipeline from the U.S.-Mexico border tothe plant. In today’s dollars, the value of the 10-year gas supplycontract could approach $1 billion. Delivery of gas is expected tobegin in December, enabling the CFE to serve up to 1,500 MW of newgas-fired generation at the Presidente Juarez power plant.

Joe Fisher, Houston

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