Weekly Report - 27 August 2015 (WR-15-34)

BOLIVIA | Gran Chaco LPG plant opened. On 24 August Bolivia’s President Evo Morales played host to Paraguay’s president Horacio Cartes at the inauguration of the ‘Carlos Villegas’ hydrocarbon processing plant [WR-15-27]. The plant, located in Yacuiba, Tarija department, is in the Gran Chaco geographical region that stretches across southern Bolivia, western Paraguay and northern Argentina. It was built by Bolivia’s state-owned hydrocarbons firm, Yacimientos Petrolíferos Fiscales Bolivianos (YPFB), to help boost Bolivia’s natural gas exporting capacity, especially liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) to neighbouring Paraguay, Peru and further afield to Uruguay. The US$600m plant is billed as being one of the largest of its kind in South America; capable of processing 32.2m cubic metres of natural gas a day and produce 3.14 metric tonnes (t) of ethane a day, 2.24 t LPG a day and 1,650 barrels of petrol a day.