Argentine energy company Pluspetrol will invest $480 million in exploring and developing new reserves in Peru's biggest natural gas block, the company said.
Pluspetrol leads the Camisea consortium that controls the gas fields in the southern Cusco region. Proven natural gas reserves in block 88 are the fields' biggest and, combined with block 56, they amount to 13.1 trillion cubic feet, the company said.
The planned investment will allow the company to build six exploratory platforms, at a cost of about $70 million each, and a 10.5 km pipeline in block 88, Pluspetrol's environmental manager Nelson Soto told reporters.
Roberto Ramallo, the former executive manager of Pluspetrol, said last year that the Camisea consortium would direct all reserves found in block 88 toward domestic consumption.
Indigenous groups have said new exploration will harm isolated tribes who live in a reserve overlapping the block.
Peru's President Ollanta Humala has pledged to increase natural gas output to make it cheaply available as a fuel for everything from cars and power plants to ovens.
Spanish energy firm Repsol, U.S. company Hunt Oil and other foreign companies are members of the Camisea consortium, which has already started exploration in block 56. Ramallo said the consortium had invested more than $1.2 billion in exploratory work in that block between 2008 and 2012.
