LONDON, Dec. 19 (UPI) -- British energy company BG Group said Thursday it started commercial natural gas production from the second phase of its Itau project in Bolivia.
BG said the second phase of operations at the Itau development will raise production by 42 percent to 10,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day by early 2014.
BG Group Chief Executive Officer Chris Finlayson said the Bolivian facility marks the end of a productive year for his company.
"We have achieved what we set out to do, and importantly we have done it safely," he said in a statement.
BG Group is a partner in a project that counts a Bolivian subsidiary of French energy company Total and Petroleo Brasileiro, known also as Petrobras, among its major stakeholders.
When Petrobras became the operator of Itau in 2011, it said production there could be as high as 53 million cubic feet per day.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration in an August profile said Bolivia holds 9.9 trillion cubic feet of natural gas reserves. EIA said decreased investments in the country's energy sector meant production was on the decline.
