THE GEOGRAPHY OF GAS IN THE BRAZILIAN AMAZON

Abstract

Natural gas (NG) and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) are essential products in modern life and have extended their usefulness beyond domestic use. Industry, services and transportation have gradually been promoting the substitution of fuel oil due to environmental appeals and for economic reasons. This has led to the emergence of a gas “geopolitics” associated with the control of gas deposits by companies and nation-states, of gas pipeline routes, and of gas transportation and distribution. The objective of this article is to show the spatial circuit of the production of this product in Brazil and the companies that control its supply-chain in the country. For this purpose, we approched the subject from the literature review and interviews with piped gas and LPG cylinder distributors in the city of Manaus. An emphasis is given to the exploration and distribution in the Amazon, a region that has one of the largest onshore deposits in Brazil. We demonstrate the planning and logistics developed by the companies to take the cooking gas to the most distant cities by river, as well as the adaptations made by local residents to use the gas in several equipments. Finally, we identified the potential for increasing the use of gas in the Amazon to substitute, principally, the use of diesel oil in the various thermal plants spread throughout the region that serve the isolated systems of energy generation in the small Amazonian cities.