The loan will go to Transportadora Gasene, which was created by the federal energy company Petrobras to build the project. Gasene is made up of three sections that link Brazil's gas-producing region in the SE to the gas-hungry NE. Construction has already started on two smaller sections linking Cabiunas to Vitoria (the Gascav – 300km), and Vitoria to Cacimbas (130km), which are due to be completed shortly. The Gascav is due to start commercial operations in the second half of this year, Petrobras said. The final 940-km long Gascac, which links Cacimbas to the pipeline's terminal at Catu, has yet to be contracted, although Chinese construction company Sinopec is due to receive an EPC contract for the project. The Gasene project, which will have capacity to carry 20m cum/d of gas, is considered essential to increasing energy supply in the NE region from the gasfields in the Campos basin. Until the Cacimbas-Catu Gascac comes online, Gasene will be used to carry gas south to Vitoria from Cacimbas in Espirito Santo's northern coast, where new gasfield developments are being concluded. Howevre, when the Cacimbas-Catu Gascac section comes on-line in 2009, the flow will be reversed to take gas to Catu in Bahia state, where Gasene will link up to the existing pipeline network in the NE region.