Brazil's Guanabara Bay terminal to receive first LNG cargo in five months: CAS

The Guanabara Bay regasification terminal, located in Brazil's Rio de Janeiro state, is set to receive its first LNG cargo in nearly five months on June 6, according to June 5 data from S&P Global Commodities at Sea(opens in a new tab).

The laden Celsius Geneva LNG carrier is expected to arrive at the Petrobras-operated terminal on June 6. The last LNG cargo imported to Guanabara arrived onboard the Seapeak Vancouver(opens in a new tab) on Jan. 9.

A Petrobras spokesperson declined to comment on whether the cargo is a spot purchase by the Brazilian state-run company.

The Celsius Geneva loaded from the Freeport LNG terminal in Texas in early May. The carrier is also expected to deliver a cargo to Argentina on June 22 as the first of nine cargoes state-run Enarsa awarded to BP(opens in a new tab) in its second tender of this year, a Latin America-based source said June 5.

It is unclear if the cargo will make a partial unload at Guanabara prior to heading for Argentina's Escobar terminal in Buenos Aires province, which can only handle partial cargoes due to draft restrictions on the south bank of the Parana River, where the port is located.

A BP spokesperson declined to comment on the matter, while Enarsa did not immediately respond to a separate request for comment.

"The Escobar terminal only receives ships with partial loads due to draft restrictions," an Atlantic-based trader said. "So if a ship leaves fully loaded from a plant in the US, for example, it has to unload a partial cargo somewhere. Brazil is just one option, but many players unload in Central America or the Caribbean."

The seller of a cargo partially unloading in Brazil and then supplying the remaining volumes in Argentina is "generally the same," the same Latin America-based source said.

BP is an offtaker of Freeport LNG.

Two of the six vessels that have delivered LNG cargoes in Argentina this year partially unloaded volumes in Brazil prior to heading to Escobar, according to on CAS data.

Having loaded from the Corpus Christi facility in Texas, the Cool Rider carrier partially unloaded a cargo at the Petrobras-operated Bahia terminal in mid-May before heading to Argentina as an emergency spot purchase(opens in a new tab) by Enarsa to deal with an unexpected natural gas crisis at the end of May.

More recently, the Gordon Waters Knutsen also unloaded volumes(opens in a new tab) at the Bahia terminal before arriving in Argentina on June 3(opens in a new tab).

Petrobras' reason for importing the volumes onboard the Celsius Geneva could either be to offset the intermittency of wind or solar generation or compensate for a decline in Bolivian natural gas supply, according to a Brazil-based source.

Brazil has imported 36.05 Bcf of LNG this year, of which 19.08 Bcf went to Petrobras-operated terminals, according to S&P Global Commodity Insights analysts. Only 1.11 Bcf of LNG had been delivered to Guanabara Bay year to date, the analysts said.

Platts, part of Commodity Insights, assessed DES Brazil for LNG deliveries 15-45 days forward at $10.494/MMBtu on June 5, at a 10-cent/MMBtu discount to July NWE.