Origem Energia is preparing Brazil’s first underground natural gas storage project, located in Alagoas, aimed at operational flexibility and greater liquidity for the national market starting in 2027.
Origem Energia is advancing a strategic move to transform the natural gas sector in Brazil. The company plans to obtain, by the end of 2026, the necessary environmental licensing to operate the country’s first underground storage project in the Pilar Hub, in Alagoas. The venture will utilize depleted reservoirs—wells where hydrocarbon extraction has already been exhausted—to create a strategic fuel reserve.
The initiative received a crucial green light in December 2025, when ANP (National Agency of Petroleum, Natural Gas and Biofuels) approved unprecedented experimental regulation to make the project viable. The facility, acquired from Petrobras in 2021, is being adapted to act as a balancing platform, allowing the gas system to gain resilience in the face of natural supply and demand fluctuations.
Strategic Infrastructure and Investments
To make the initial phase viable, Origem Energia has already invested approximately R$ 100 million in adapting wells, compressors, and transportation pipelines. The project provides for additional investments of $200 million as the venture matures. The pilot is expected to reach full capacity in 2028, with expansions scheduled between 2029 and 2032, taking advantage of the potential of over 500 depleted zones available in the asset.
The company’s storage director, Anderson Bastos, emphasizes that the proposal goes beyond internal use: the idea is to offer market infrastructure to third parties.
We are taking an existing operation, giving it new meaning, and opening the market to third parties. We could be using this for ourselves, but this is a decision by Origem, driven by Felipe, who is a visionary, and who said: ‘No, the market needs this flexibility platform.’
The executive made the statement during the ROG.e event in Rio de Janeiro.
The Role of Storage in Market Opening
The need for storage becomes evident with the opening process of the gas market, driven by the New Gas Law. With the entry of new agents and the decline of Petrobras’s concentrated operation, dependence on flexible instruments has grown. Today, gas supply and consumption are not always in balance, and storage acts as a lung, retaining surplus during periods of low demand and injecting volume into the system during consumption peaks, especially during periods of high load for thermoelectric power plants.
There is no way to have a liquid market, a competitive market, without ballast, without storage.
Bastos points out. Storage also solves logistical bottlenecks. When the transportation grid becomes saturated or gas, which is a byproduct of oil extraction, needs to be drained without the need for flaring—a practice that is prohibited and environmentally harmful—injection into reservoirs emerges as a sustainable and economically efficient alternative.
Perspectives and the Future of Gas in Brazil
Underground storage technology, already consolidated in mature markets like the United States and Europe, is seen by experts as a game-changer. According to Sylvie D’Apote, managing partner at Prysma E&T Consultores, the modularity of Origem Energia‘s project is a competitive differential. Because it is a depleted field, the adaptation cost is significantly lower than creating new structures, such as salt caverns.
As the project takes shape, the business model tends to evolve from bilateral contracts to an open-season system, where capacity will be publicly offered to the market. This evolution signals an important maturation in Brazilian energy infrastructure, reducing exclusive dependence on LNG terminals and creating an environment where natural gas can flow with greater security, competitive pricing, and predictability for industry and the power sector.
