Built at a cost of $2.5 billion, the South Texas-Tuxpan pipeline is a crucial outlet for US natural gas as can deliver up to .6 billion cubic feet per day to the southeast of Mexico. The interconnector is jointly owned by IEnova and Canadian pipeline company TC Energy.
Progress is also being made on other Mexican pipeline projects. The Marine Pipeline started operations in September, and a month earlier IEnove resolved matters related with to the Marine and Sonara pipeline with the Mexican energy regulator CFE. However, there are still open issues regarding the Guaymas-El Oro pipeline which the developer is working on with government entities.
Investment in 2019 amounted to $665 million, primarily related to the solar and liquid terminal projects and funding of $49.1 million for Costa Azul LNG and $15.8 million in the South Texas-Tuxpan pipeline which is linked to Enbridge’s Valley Crossing Pipeline in Texas.
Renewable energy is IEnova’s second stronghold in Mexico where it just took financial close on the 150 MW Border Solar project, to be built at a cost of $160 million. Three solar photovoltaic ventures were place in service at Pima, Rumorosa and Tepezala. Once all of IEnova’s renewable projects become operational, they will have over 1,000 megawatts installed capacity contracted long-term in U.S. dollars with high-quality offtakers and with a total investment of around $1.8 billion.
IEnova parent company Sempra has a strategy to achieve around 45 million tonnes per annum of LNG production by the mid-2020s through three plants, the Cameron facility at Hackberry in Louisiana that came on stream in 2019, the Port Arthur plant in Texas and the Costa Azul facility.
FID on the Costa Azul liquefaction project is targeted to be reached later this quarter, IEnova announced. For this venture, the company already signed three Heads of Agreements with Total, Mitsui and Tokyo Gas.