Investment group Lorinvest's GNLink has enteredthe Brazilian natural gas market and is aiming to take advantage of Brazil's gas infrastructure bottlenecks, with several projects for natural gas, biomethane and green hydrogen. Argus spoke with GNLink chief executive Marcelo Rodrigues to understand the group's current projects. Edited highlights follow
What are GNLink's current projects for natural gas in Brazil?
We are a natural gas distributor funded last September with a focus on energy transition. Our main goal is to address the lack of infrastructure, which is very limited in the country, making gas available in places where it currently is not.
We believe in both highway distribution and maritime distribution. In the Brazilian coast, there are nine LNG vessels [floating storage and regasification units (FSRUs)], most of them associated with big thermoelectric projects. But we are not dispatching thermal generation from them. We want to distribute LNG through cabotage through Brazil. We are developing an LNG barge in partnership with maritime transportation company Norsul and negotiating small-sized ships for the cabotage. The idea is to take the LNG from these FSRUs and use it for cabotage and bunkering.
Does the company have any signed deals to distribute LNG through highways?
We believe in the transportation of natural gas in its liquified state. We will also work with compressed natural gas and biomethane, but we believe transportation is limited to a certain distance and infrastructure. An LNG tank can transport six times more gas than a compressed natural gas one. We understand that the best way to distribute gas to places where gas does not reach is by using its liquid form.
We currently have 15 LNG and bio-LNG projects in our portfolio, which add to our compressed gas and biomethane projects. One of them is the production of LNG from a 88,000 m³/d gas well in Parana state, from gas trading company Tradener. We want to bring that gas into Parana. That is our first project and we aim to have it operational in the first half of next year. We expect to sign two other projects by the end of the year.
How has GNLink been positioning itself in the green hydrogen market?
We have a partnership with Portuguese equipment manufacturer PRF to develop small-scale green hydrogen projects in Brazil. There are big projects being developed in Brazil, in the Suape, Pecem and Acu ports [in Pernambuco, Ceara and Rio de Janeiro states, respectively], but that is a completely different focus from what is being done in Europe. There are three niches in the small-scale hydrogen market that Europe is executing quite well: [hydrogen] injection in gas pipelines, centralized green hydrogen production for some industries and hydrogen fuel cells.
We signed that partnership to develop small-scale green hydrogen in Brazil and have a team focused on that. We expect to have some small-scale hydrogen cases by the end of the year. There is a need for regulation, but we want to offer the Brazilian market opportunities for small-scale green hydrogen. These are projects that go up until 5MW. We aim to work with 0.5MW, 1MW, 2MW and 5MW electrolyzers. That capacity will allow for an injection of up to 20pc hydrogen in many Brazilian city gates.
