Route 4a Gas Pipeline

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The Route 4a Gas Pipeline is a proposed natural gas pipeline off the Atlantic coast of southeastern Brazil.

Location

The offshore section of the proposed pipeline would run northwest from the Santos Basin pre-salt fields to Praia Grande, on the coast of São Paulo state; from here, an onshore segment of pipeline would continue to the Cubatão natural gas processing plant.

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Project Details

• Operator: Comgás
• Parent Company: Cosan S.A.
• Proposed capacity: 20 million cubic meters per day
• Length: 291 km / 181 miles
• Status: Proposed
• Start Year: 2025

Background

In May 2019 Brazil's Secretary of Oil and Gas of the Ministry of Mines and Energy, Márcio Félix, stated that Petrobras was considering building more pipeline networks, to be named Route 4, 5 and 6. The Route 4 project is the oldest of the three, having begun the process of environmental licensing in 2014. It is sponsored by Brazil's largest natural gas pipeline operator, Comgás, a subsidiary of Cosan S.A.

Projections of the Route 4 pipeline's length range from 275 km to 291 km; most of the pipeline would be offshore, with a shorter onshore segment connecting to the Cubatão gas processing plant in São Paulo state. The pipeline would have a proposed capacity ranging from 10 to 21 MMcf/d (million cubic meters per day), a diameter of 24 inches, and an estimated cost of R$ 4.5 billion (4.5 billion Brazilian reais).

Project developer Cosan has also proposed an alternative pipeline known as the Route 4b Gas Pipeline, which would transport natural gas from the Santos Basin pre-salt fields to Ilha da Madeira in the Port of Itaguaí, Rio de Janeiro state.

As of November 2021, the Brazilian government's offshore gas infrastructure plan listed the Route 4a pipeline as an active project in the licensing phase.

As of November 2022, it remained unclear which version of the Route 4 pipeline (Route 4a or Route 4b) was more likely to be developed.

A June 2023 news report indicated that project developer Cosan continued to favor Route 4a to Cubatão in São Paulo state, even as the governor of Rio de Janeiro state lobbied for the potential of Route 4b to supply a future blue hydrogen industry and power plants in the Porto do Açu region. As of early 2024, the future route of the pipeline remained a subject of dispute between Rio and São Paulo states.