Mexico has two terminals with the capacity to store the equivalent of four shipments of liquefied natural gas (LNG), but that is a small fraction of the 6 billion cubic feet of gas that the country imports each day.
In the middle of this year, the CFE imported a shipment of LNG and stored the gas in the Altamira regasification terminal, on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico.
A second cargo is expected to arrive soon at the Manzanillo LNG terminal on Mexico’s Pacific coast to complete an initial booking for this winter, Altamirano said.
“In the February 2021 event, CFE was able to continue generating (electricity) because in addition to having generation technologies with fuels such as coal, we were also able to acquire LNG ships in those weeks,” the official added.
Last year’s emergency shipments were supplied by commercial companies, including Trafigura, helping to overcome a crisis in Mexico caused by the freezing of gas pipelines, the increase in gas prices and the order of the Texas government to suspend exports of the fuel during the contingency.
The next step to ensure a gas reserve large enough for Mexico to handle a similar weather event would be to contract storage in the United States in caverns or at a site protected from the cold by insulated tanks and pipes, Altamirano said.
“Storage would be not only from a security perspective, but also operational to handle those daily ups and downs that the CFE has (in generation),” he added.