Peru Energy

At a time when miners around the world are pulling back capital expenditures, which is in turn limiting production growth, investment is pouring into Peru and fuelling what may become a copper boom. Several large-scale copper projects – often called megaproyectos in Peru – are due to begin production between 2015 and 2017. These projects have the...

The growth of the mining sector, driven by a sharp rise in commodity prices, spurred Peru’s economy to the fastest sustained growth rate in Latin America during much of the past decade. The sector drew in billions of dollars in investment and drove the emergence of a new middle class with levels of disposable income that had never been achieved in Peru.

Since starting production of large quantities of natural gas at the Camisea field in 2004, Peru has primarily burned its gas production in thermoelectric plants or, since 2010, exported it in liquefied form. Both the government and Peruvian industry are now turning their attention toward developing higher-value end uses of natural gas. The most significant is the...

of rapid transformation. Energy demand was still low ten years ago when the country depended almost entirely on hydroelectric power in addition to petroleum imports to meet its needs. At that time, Peru still had limited oil production, no production of natural gas and little to speak of in terms of energy exports. Today, by contrast, the country is among the leading producers...