The first High-Level Session of the 11th Energy Week focused on regional gas integration as one of its key themes. The discussion began with a shared understanding: Latin America and the Caribbean have abundant energy resources, but harnessing their potential requires expanded infrastructure and demand, greater investment, regulatory harmonization, and long-term planning.
Energy sector leaders agreed that greater gas integration can strengthen energy security, reduce costs, and drive productive development across Latin America and the Caribbean. Such integration would enable countries to better leverage their complementary strengths, diversify energy supplies, and respond more resiliently to disruptions in international markets. To realize this potential, they emphasized the need to coordinate production, demand, and infrastructure through regional planning, harmonized regulatory frameworks, and long-term political agreements that provide investment certainty and support energy transitions.
“We are advancing a Latin American and Caribbean strategy that connects our gas-producing basins with regional demand and enables the development of gas markets with common rules and long-term predictability,” stated Guido Maiulini, Head of Strategic Advisory at OLACDE and moderator of the panel.
For Griselda Lambertini, Director at Argentina’s National Gas and Electricity Regulatory Authority, the Southern Cone’s experience offered a key lesson: “We need a strategic agreement that ensures interconnection also translates into integration.” Looking ahead, she called for regional technical and regulatory coordination capable of organizing cross-border energy exchanges and anticipating emergency situations.
For her part, Heloisa Borges Bastos Esteves, from FGV Energia, highlighted Brazil’s role as a large-scale market: “Brazil can provide the demand needed to drive the region forward while also benefiting from competitively priced natural gas.” To make progress, she emphasized the value of establishing a multilateral forum to jointly address regulatory, contractual, fiscal, and technical issues.
Luz Estella Murgas Maya, Regional Coordinator for Latin America at the International Gas Union (IGU), warned that “the problem in Latin America and the Caribbean is not a lack of resources; the problem lies in delays in implementing projects to harness them.” In this regard, she suggested drawing on policy instruments that provide stability, investment incentives, and mechanisms to accelerate strategic projects.
Meanwhile, Juan Ríos, Principal Executive of the Energy, Gas, and Strategic Mining Division at CAF, emphasized that “integration is one of the Bank’s founding principles” and envisioned a region “supplied by its own resources,” supported by planning that leverages the complementary strengths of countries across the region.
“The doors are open,” stated Marcela Silva, Regional Director of Infrastructure for Latin America and the Caribbean at the World Bank, referring to support for infrastructure projects related to gas transportation, processing, and distribution. She also emphasized that aggregating demand and sharing infrastructure can transform projects that are unviable at the national level into bankable projects at the regional level.
