In 2020, the maintenance of an efficient, reliable and sustainable operation and the protection of its employees in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic were the priorities of GNL Quintero, which has presented its Sustainability Report, providing an account of its different areas of action during the year.
One of the Company’s principal operational achievements in 2020 was that, despite the challenges posed by the pandemic, it achieved a plant availability of 99.4% and a reliability of 98.6%, reflecting ongoing operational excellence amid an important health contingency.
The Sustainability Report notes that the Terminal supplied 2,362 million Sm3 of natural gas and 475,495 m3 of LNG. This represented a 6.1% increase on the energy supplied in 2019. The operation contributed to the use of natural gas to generate 18% of the power produced in the National Electricity System.
All these figures show that the high availability, reliability, efficiency and flexibility of GNL Quintero’s operation, together with the environmental advantages of LNG, are making a concrete contribution to Chile’s transition towards a cleaner energy matrix.
Natural gas also has short and medium-term advantages over other alternatives such as green hydrogen and energy storage which, albeit important and with great potential, are not yet fully technically and economically developed. As a result, it is natural gas that is called on to provide the system’s security and stability.
In 2020, the Terminal continued to operate cleanly and apply very high environmental management standards, without registering incidents with environmental consequences. Indeed, GNL Quintero’s emissions in 2020 accounted for less than 0.1% of the SOx, NOx and PM emitted by all the sources on the Quintero Bay.
These positive results were achieved thanks to the commitment and vocation of all the Company’s employees who, in the face of the health crisis caused by the pandemic, efficiently adopted new health protocols and work dynamics. As a result, no work-related coronavirus infections were reported during the year when over 1,700 preventive tests (PCRs and antigen tests) were carried out.
The Company was also concerned about the pandemic’s effects on the community and implemented a series of projects to support both health management, donating filters for the special masks of staff at the Quintero Hospital, and the community’s economic recovery. In the latter case, together with the municipal government and the local Chamber of Commerce, it implemented Compra en Quintero (Buy in Quintero), a virtual show window for the area’s retail businesses.
To read or download GNL Quintero’s Sustainability Report, click here.