LNG

Dec 29 (LNGJ) - Engie Brasil, formerly known as Tractebel Energia and a Brazilian subsidiary of France-based European utility group Engie, has reached an agreement to sell a 15 percent stake in natural gas pipeline firm Transportadora Associada de Gas (TAG) to the Canadian pension fund, Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec (CDPQ) for 3.1 billion Brazilian reais (US$640 million). TAG owns and operates a large part of Brazil's natural gas pipeline network with some 4,500 kilometres (2,800 miles) across 10 Brazilian states.

   The transaction when completed will increase CDPQ’s stake in TAG to 50 percent. Engie Brasil will own 17.5 percent and its French parent company will hold the rest, giving Engie units a 50 percent shareholding. Engie and CDPQ jointly acquired a 90 percent stake in TAG in 2019 from Brazil’s state-run energy company Petrobras for about $8.6Bln and afterwards bought the remaining 10 percent still held by Petrobras.

Petrobras, the Brazilian state-run oil and natural gas company, has announced its largest natural gas discoveries in more than a decade in six deepwater wells in the Sergipe Basin offshore northeast Brazil.

French utility Engie, the parent company of France's network operator and LNG terminals owner, said its US$8.6 billion joint bid with a Canadian fund won the competitive tender conducted by Brazilian energy company Petrobras for the sale of the South American nation’s largest gas transmission network.