Transportadora Brasileira Gasoduto Bolívia-Brasil S.A. (TBG) has requested authorization from Brazil’s oil and gas watchdog, the National Agency of Petroleum, Natural Gas and Biofuels (ANP), to implement a $286 million infrastructure expansion known as the Free Allocation Project.

The initiative targets a critical physical bottleneck in the southern section of the Bolivia–Brazil Gas Pipeline (Gasbol).

By eliminating flow restrictions, TBG seeks to maximize the distribution of imported liquefied natural gas (LNG) into Santa Catarina as traditional imports from Bolivia continue to dry up.

Under the submitted business plan, the project will relocate two compression stations from Gasbol’s northern section to its southern stretch and duplicate an 18-inch-diameter pipeline segment running between Santa Catarina and Paraná.

TBG estimates construction will take three and a half years, targeting operational startup by October 2029.

Currently, gas reception at Santa Catarina’s Garuva entry point—connected to the Terminal Gás Sul LNG facility in Babitonga Bay—is capped at 6.8 million cubic meters per day heading northbound and 5.5 million cubic meters per day southbound due to pipe diameter, altitude, and pressure limitations.

TBG’s expansion will nearly double total receiving capacity at Garuva from 12.3 million to 23.6 million cubic meters per day, enabling seamless bidirectional flow across system entry and exit points.

The pipeline overhaul responds directly to the structural decline of Bolivian gas exports, which plummeted from approximately 34 million cubic meters per day in mid-2014 to around 12 million cubic meters per day by 2025, with supplies projected to exhaust entirely after 2030.

To bridge the gap, Brazil is shifting toward domestic pre-salt gas—which grew from 39% of national production in 2016 to 77% in recent years—and imported regasified LNG.

Additionally, the project addresses demands from the 2026 Capacity Reserve Auction, which contracted ten thermal power plants in TBG's delivery zone requiring up to 14 million cubic meters of natural gas per day by 2031.

Without the southern pipeline expansion, TBG warned the regulator, regional supply-and-demand deficits will emerge between 2028 and 2030.