Chron.com:
Brazil’s state-run oil company Petroleo Brasileiro SA, or Petrobras, began construction of a huge gas pipeline linking the Urucu oil and gas deposits in the Amazon jungle to the Amazonas state capital of Manaus, the government said.
President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva symbolically started the welding on the pipeline in Coari, near the Urucu fields some 1,800 miles (2,900 kilometers) northwest of Rio de Janeiro, the government news service Agencia Brasil said.
The 415-mile (670-kilometer) pipeline is scheduled to start operation in March 2008, carrying 4.7 million cubic meters (6.1 million cubic yards) a day of natural gas to Manaus, a city of 1.5 million people on the upper Amazon River, the agency said.
The gas will fuel thermoelectric power plants in Manaus that now run to provide fuel oil and its investment would total more than 1.27 billion reals (US$560 million; euro505 million) on the pipeline, to be built by Brazilian consortiums, Petrobras reported in a statement.
The company said it already has spent 500 million reals (US$283 million; euro220 million) for 10-inch (25-centimeter) and 20-inch (50-centimeter) tubes and to pay the Brazilian army to clear the rain forest along the course of the pipeline.
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