Burgos Natural Gas Plant, Mexico

Burgos natural gas plant is the main producer of non-associated natural gas in Mexico. The plant was built by the state-owned oil giant Petroleos Mexicanos. The project comprises of the development of reserves and production of natural gas in the Burgos basin, Sabinas and Piedras Negras. It has a total of six cryogenic plants in operation.

As the strategic centre of the natural gas market in the country's northern districts, the Burgos gas complex has a total processing capacity of 1.2bn cubic feet of sweet wet gas a day, which accounts for 26% of Pemex's total gas capacity.

Natural gas produced from the plant helps Mexico to curb the import of gas and generate considerable savings of foreign exchange. The cost of producing gas from the basin in Mexico is about half that of importing it.

Pemex planned to develop the giant natural gas field with 166 wells over a period of 15 years. In 2008 Pemex discovered five new wells: Cali-1, Perone-1, Grande-1, Murex-1 and Ricos-1001.

As of 1 December 2009 the Burgos field would have probable reserves of 8.6MMb of crude oil and 2,314.2MMf of gas. The possible reserves are estimated at 3.7MMb of crude oil and 2,906.7MMf of gas.

Cryogenic plants

The Burgos project involves the building of six cryogenic plants. The plants at the complex can recover natural gasoline, propane and butane from the natural gas extracted from the basin. After the first two plants began operations in 2004, Pemex started to construct two more cryogenic modular plants, each with a capacity of 200 million cubic feet, to expand the capacity, which opened in 2006.

The fifth and sixth cryogenic plants have processing capacity of 200 million cubic feet (MCF) of gas a day. Construction of these plants commenced in January 2007.

The fifth plant was completed in December 2008. Pemex successfully completed the Burgos project with the commissioning of the sixth cryogenic plant in the gas processing centre (GPC) in February 2009. It was the final cryogenic plant and cost $676m to Pemex. The plant was built under the third phase of the project in the Tamaulipas and Nuevo Leon states.

Burgos-monterrey pipeline

The Burgos GPC generates liquefied petroleum gas (LPG). In order to supply the LPG fuel to the cities of La Laguna, Saltillo and Monterrey, Pemex plans to build a pipeline system for LPG transportation. It consists of a 12in diameter, 188km-long transportation pipeline and can supply 30,000 barrels of LPG a day.

The pipeline was constructed and operated by Gasoductos de Chihuahua, a company constituted by El Paso Corporation, and Pemex-Gas and Basic Petrochemicals. The company obtained the required authorisation at the end of 2005 and the pipeline was opened in December 2007.

Surveillance over illegal tapping

The Burgos basin recently ran into the risk of illegal tapping of pipelines due to insufficient surveillance operations.

In October 2008, 270,000l of condensates were extracted illegally from the basin. These extracted condensates were later seized and Pemex increased surveillance over the basin to avoid such tapping in future.

Background

The Cuenca de Burgos gas field is one of the important non-associated gas basins located in the north-eastern part of Mexico in the states of Tamaulipas, Nuevo Leon and Coahuila. The gas field contributes more than 78% of the national production of this type of gas.

The basin contributes 22% of the national gas production.

The Burgos gas project took shape in the year 2000 when Pemex announced the strategic gas programme with the aim of increasing non-associated natural gas production in five areas: Macuspana, Veracruz, Misantla, Tampico and Burgos.