Bolivia has started building a small-scale LNG liquefaction plant in Rio Grande (Santa Cruz state). Construction is led by a Spanish consortium of Sener Ingeniería y Sistemas and Ros Roca Indox Cryo Energy, which were awarded the contracts in March 2013. The plant will have a process capacity of 200 t/d (0.073 Mt/year) and should be commissioned in the second half of 2014. The output will be transported by tankers to six of the nine regions of Bolivia; gas will then be regasified in small dedicated units and will be distributed to about 140,000 houses and 5,000 businesses. An older LNG plant project had been scrapped after protests; the plant would have been located in Chile with which Bolivia has historical tensions.
Moreover, Bolivia enacted a law to support oil and gas exploration activities by Gazprom and Total. Gazprom and Total will have a period of 5 years for studies and to enter the phase of drilling two wells in the Azero block; this block is located between the departments of Chuquisaca and Santa Cruz and is estimated to have a significant hydrocarbon potential.