RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The Government of Brazil’s Ceará State and British BP Gas & Power Investments signed on Monday, January 17, a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to implement a natural gas hub in Port of Pecém, located in the municipality of São Gonçalo do Amarante.
Under this context, Vice Governor Izolda Cela reinforced the importance of strengthening and creating partnerships like this for Ceará and Brazil. She pointed out that “here in Ceará we have been working hard, also with these fundamental partnerships, in the sense of positioning the state in an important condition, according to the potential we have and fit in this energy issue. In addition to all that this represents, both for the development of Ceará and the world”.
For his part, the president of BP in Brazil, Mario Lindenhayn, indicated that “it is important to understand these opportunities and work together so that Brazil assumes its capacity to represent its full potential in renewable energies. Because of this, the State of Ceará is part of a key region for BP’s new strategy. The gas hub could have an installed capacity of around 2.2 GW, which would be enough to supply 10 million homes and generate around 5,000 jobs during construction.”
ENERGY TRANSITION
BP’s senior vice president, Federica Berra, highlighted the role that natural gas will play in the energy transition, commenting that “we have the ambition to be a carbon-neutral company by 2050 and gas is part of this process. As an important transition fuel, gas adds reliability to the system, compensating for the intermittency of some renewable sources. In the long term, we see decarbonized gas as an essential component of a carbon-neutral future.”
In January 2021, the Lightsource BP joint venture invested a sum of over US$181 million in Ceará for the implementation of two photovoltaic solar parks in the municipalities of Milagres and Icó. The Milagres unit will start operating this year, have a capacity of 202 MW, and receive an investment of US$108 million. The Icó park will have a capacity of 265 MW and an investment of US$148 million.