Brazilian LPG distributor Copa Energia is expanding its import strategy with a new contract with Trafigura that closed this week.
The LPG shipments from Trafigura will come to Transpetro's terminal in the Port of Santos in Sao Paulo state, Marcos Ferraz, head of supply and trading LPG at Copa Energia told Argus. The volume of the contract was not disclosed.
This will be the first privately-owned LPG cargo delivered to the terminal, which is owned by state-controlled Petrobras.
"Having free access and executing this operation in Transpetro's terminal is unprecedented," Copa vice-president Pedro Truqueto said, and could lead to other operations.
Copa hopes to have up to 5pc of its LPG purchases come from imports by the end of the year, either as a complement or replacements for existing volumes.
Brazil has long had just one supplier of LPG to distributors, state-owned Petrobras, which owned all the domestic refineries that generate LPG. As Petrobras' divests from refining and begins to allow others to access its terminals, Copa is seeking to be well-positioned with LPG imports to hedge against a potential shift away from LPG production by the refineries' new operators.
Copa has been looking abroad since 2019 to diversify its suppliers. Its first import contract was with Bolivia for trucked LPG from 2020 through 2023. This year, the company signed with Argentinian supplier TGS for spot imports by ship — the first operation of its kind in Brazil to sell LPG for the southern region — into the Port of Canoas in Rio Grande do Sul state. That operation has three more cargoes scheduled through next month.
With the Santos' cargo, Copa has now three Brazilian regions with the option to supply from abroad: the southern region receiving LPG from Argentina, the west central region supplied from Bolivia, and now the southeastern region with the cargo going into Santos.
Copa is the biggest LPG distributor in Brazil and owner of Copagaz and Liquigas, with 25pc market share. The Brazilian LPG market is comprised of 20 distribution companies, with 3.6mn tons of LPG sold from January-June 2021.
