Promigas: Colombia needs Pacific LNG import facility

Colombia's Promigas has ruled out any interest in the troubled Pacific LNG project as it seeks to expand its Spec regasification plant on the Caribbean coast. 

The comments came less than a week after a bidding process to build and operate the Pacific LNG infrastructure was declared void due to a lack of interest, repeating the result of an initial tender in 2021. 

"We already participate in the Spec regasification plant, at this moment we are not interested in participating in the Pacific gas [facility]," Promigas CEO Juan Manuel Rojas said during an event broadcast on social media. 

Barranquilla-based Promigas has a 51% equity stake in Spec, with the remainder held by Dutch tank storage company Royal Vopak.

Promigas has said it plans to expand the Spec terminal in Cartagena by 200 million cubic feet per day to provide "strategic support" to the country's energy supply amid rising domestic gas demand.

Despite preferring to focus on Spec, Rojas said Colombia "urgently" needed an LNG regasification facility on the Pacific coast. "We do believe that it is very important for the country to have this plant, especially to give reliability to the entire system in the southwest of the country," he said. 

"The fact that it has been declared deserted twice is because, perhaps, it is not being designed properly. But the country urgently needs to have that plant."