With a transportation capacity of 40 MMcm/d, the 38 inch diameter Gasduc III project is South America’s largest diameter and Brazil’s largest capacity gas pipeline – surpassing the 32 inch diameter Gasbol Pipeline, which runs from Bolivia to Brazil and has a capacity of 30 MMcm/d of gas.

The 179 km Gasduc III Pipeline runs through eight municipalities in Rio de Janeiro and construction required 73 water crossings, 56 road, railway and existing pipe crossings, as well as the drilling of two horizontal directional drills.

Engineering challenges

To avoid vegetation suppression in the Atlantic Forest and preserve the habitat of animals under the threat of extinction, Petrobras decided that a tunnel would be constructed under the Santana Mountain in the municipality of Cachoeiras de Macacu in the Sao Joao River Basin.

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The tunnel measures 3,758 m long, 6.2 m in height and 7.2 m wide. All of the material removed during the construction of the tunnel was used to reinstate areas that had already been cleared before work had begun.

A 25 MMcm/d capacity compressor station was constructed at one end of the pipeline, in the city of Duque de Caxias, while capacity was increased to 40 MMcm/d at the Cabiúnas Terminal in Macae at the opposite end.

In August 2008, Odetech – a joint venture of Odebrecht and Techint Engenharia – signed a contract with Petrobras subsidiary Transportadora Associada de Gás (TAG), to build and install the trunk line and fibre optic system for the pipeline.

At the peak of the project, between August and September 2009, there were 2,800 people working on the pipeline.

Connecting Brazil

The Gasduc III Pipeline is an important project for Brazil, designed to boost both supply flexibility and transportation capacity of natural gas to meet the increasing demands of the southeastern markets, the nation’s biggest gas consuming region.

Gasduc III interconnects Brazil’s main natural gas processing terminal at Cabiúnas, to natural gas Hub 2, located in Duque de Caxias.

Hub 2 operates as a gas pipeline interconnection point for the Japeri – Reduc, Reduc – Volta Redonda, and Reduc – Belo Horizonte gas pipelines, as well as a gas pipeline to an LNG terminal in Guanabara Bay, allowing greater flexibility in the supply of southeastern Brazil’s gas market.