The Latin American and Caribbean Energy Organization (OLACDE) and CAF – Development Bank of Latin America and the Caribbean have spent two years analyzing how to move Southern Cone gas across borders, and that work is now reaching its final chapter. The two organizations will now launch the project's last phase. It will be based in Montevideo and will bring the power sector into the discussion: it is devoted to the joint optimization of the gas and electricity systems of the countries of Mercosur, the South American trade bloc, and Chile.
According to the invitation the organizers sent to Shale24, on Nov. 24 and 25 there will be several working sessions with the bloc's energy authorities, within Mercosur's Working Subgroup No. 9 (SGT No. 9) "Energy" and the Meeting of Ministers. Foreign ministries, regulators and international organizations will also take part, and there will be a sector dialogue with gas and electricity companies.
The closing session will be open to the public. On Nov. 25 at 3 p.m., with in-person attendance and a livestream, OLACDE and CAF will present the results of the last phase, a summary of the full project and the agreements reached in the working sessions. Full details of the event were due to be released in the week of Nov. 9.
The Project Returns to Where It Started
At the 53rd (LIII) Meeting of Energy Ministers of Latin America and the Caribbean, held in Montevideo in 2023, countries agreed to move ahead with regional gas integration. Mercosur's SGT No. 9 had already made strengthening electricity and gas integration a priority for 2021–2024, with an OLACDE technical study that would also cover Bolivia and Chile, according to the organization's own presentation.
In 2024, CAF approved the financing at the request of Paraguay, on behalf of the member countries, and in October the two organizations signed the technical cooperation agreement in Asunción.
Since then, the work has advanced in stages. The first concluded in Uruguay; the second worked on supply and demand projections; and the third, presented in Asunción in September 2025, on regulatory frameworks. The fourth ended in Santiago, Chile, with an open-source regional transport model that identifies the most efficient routes and estimates the final price of gas at each node of the system.
Montevideo comes to the meeting with a role of its own: Uruguay holds Mercosur's rotating pro tempore presidency in the second half of 2026.
In São Paulo, OLACDE Projected Regional Gas Trade
The fifth phase produced the project's most-cited numbers. At the meeting OLACDE and CAF held in São Paulo on May 28, the organization presented 10 integration corridors linking gas production and consumption centers in Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Uruguay and Paraguay.
The package adds up to some 6,000 kilometers of pipelines and more than 1 million horsepower of compression, with investments of between $500 million and $5 billion per corridor and a total project portfolio of more than $25 billion. The works on the list include the Gasoducto Norte, GasAndes, GNEA, the Uruguaiana connections, the bioceanic gas pipeline projects and the Tratayén–La Carlota section, which Transportadora de Gas del Norte (TGN), Argentina's northern gas pipeline operator, is pursuing with the Manuel Belgrano pipeline.
According to OLACDE's simulations, with the right infrastructure regional exports could reach between 35 million and 40 million cubic meters per day (MMm³/d) under current demand. With greater tariff flexibility and higher demand, trade would reach 60–70 MMm³/d, worth close to $5 billion a year.
"We are talking about regional gas trade of up to $5 billion a year and an investment project portfolio of more than $25 billion," Guido Maiulini, head of strategic advisory at OLACDE, said on that occasion. He had previously argued that the region's challenge lies in building a regional market. Within that map, the first firm module of Argentine gas to Brazil, of 10 MMm³/d, could start operating between 2029 and 2030.
The sixth phase took gas into industry. Presented on Sept. 1 at the Montevideo headquarters of the Latin American Integration Association (ALADI), it studied nitrogen fertilizers: in 2025, imports covered 92% of regional demand, at a cost of $6.513 billion. Replacing foreign urea purchases would require some 12 MMm³/d of gas and about $15 billion of investment. In Argentina, two projects could add 3.5 million tonnes a year, among them the urea complex of Pampa Energía, a diversified Argentine energy company, in Bahía Blanca.
Electricity Enters the Study in Its Final Stage
With the Montevideo phase, the project crosses over to the other system the region shares. Gas and electricity meet in thermal power plants, which provide firm capacity to grids when wind or sunlight drops. OLACDE's own São Paulo presentation noted that gas could support the energy transition by providing that firmness.
The organization already has work done on the power side. In June, with support from the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) and the European Union, it presented the Regional Indicative Electricity Interconnection Plan, with a 2040 horizon, 16 infrastructure projects and $3.5 billion of investment.
The political agenda is moving in step. In the declaration they signed in Brasília on Nov. 25, 2025, the energy and mining ministers of Mercosur and Chile highlighted the energy and gas integration study OLACDE is carrying out with CAF financing and welcomed the reactivation of the Electricity and Gas Integration Commission (CIEG) within SGT No. 9.