State bureaucracy and high costs for building pipelines have hindered Brazil's natural gas production and increased its dependence on imports, a senior official at the state energy company Petrobras said on Monday.

"Brazil's natural gas is not a product that is ready for use... It takes between seven and 10 years to bring a natural gas field on steam. But state bureaucracy had made the delays longer," said Ildo Sauer, who is in charge of gas operations at Petrobras.

In the case of the Campinas-Rio gas pipeline, one of the longest in southeastern Brazil, the environmental license was given two years after the project was approved, Sauer said.

As for the construction of the southeast-northeast Gasene gas pipeline, Sauer said the sudden leap in world steel prices had forced the government to hold three successive licensing rounds.

As a result, construction of the entire 1,365-kilometer-long pipeline has been delayed for months.

Source: Xinhua