OREANDA-NEWS. Peru's natural gas resources have emerged as a key issue as the country heads into the final stretch of the 10 April presidential election.

Peru boasts South America's only LNG export facility, and has 14.6 trillion ft3 of gas reserves.

The clear frontrunner, former congresswoman Keiko Fujimori, has offered vague proposals so far. While she garnered around 35pc support in the latest polls, double her nearest competitor, Peruvian law requires a candidate to receive at least 50pc of the vote to win, or face a run-off ballot.

A week before the vote, Peruvians appear torn between right- or left-wing rivals to challenge Fujimori in a 5 June run-off.

Left-wing Frente Amplio candidate Ver?nika Mendoza has begun to surge, averaging around 15pc in the final polls, up nine points from mid-March. She was in third place in the final surveys – polls cannot be published during the final week of the election – just trailing business-oriented candidate Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, known as PPK, with 16pc. Behind them are centrist Alfredo Barnechea with around 10pc and former two-term president Alan Garc?a with around 6pc.

Cusco region congresswoman Mendoza has shifted the tone of the debate in the key area of extractive industries. She has pledged to renegotiate the export contract for gas from the Camisea fields, which are located in Cusco, and to give communities around resource developments a say about how or if they are tapped. More broadly, her government plan calls for rewriting the country's 1993 constitution.

"We are going to change the model based on giving away our natural resources," said Mendoza after a 10-candidate debate 3 April. "We are going to make renegotiation of the gas contract one of first priorities."

Camisea's block 56, with 3.2 trillion ft3 in reserves, supplies 4.4m t/y Peru LNG. Under an agreement reached in the last decade, around 65pc of LNG is exported to Mexico's state-run utility CFE for regasification at the Manzanillo port. As a shareholder, Spain's Repsol was initially in charge of the export shipments, but sold the asset to Shell in 2014. Peru LNG, headed by US firm Hunt Oil, began shipping in June 2010. It has dispatched 317 shipments since then, with six leaving Peru in March, four of which went to Mexico and one each to France and Spain.

Mendoza's stance has forced other candidates to stake out a position, with Kuczynski saying late in the race that he too would support reopening the contract for LNG exports as a way to optimize Peru's gas business. Barnechea has similarly latched on, claiming that Peru has lost billions of dollars from poorly negotiated gas contracts.

Neither Peru LNG nor Shell has not commented on a proposed renegotiation.

Fujimori opposes a renegotiation, and her government plan includes only a four points related to the oil and gas sector. She offers more when it comes to mining, promising to get companies to include communities as shareholders.

While there are differences about the gas export contract, the top candidates stressed during the debate that they would focus on expanding gas distribution. Only Lima and the neighboring Ica region currently have residential gas distribution with approximately 600,000 households connected. Distribution systems using cryogenic tanker trucks should begin this year in four southern and seven northern cities.

A potential Fujimori-Mendoza race would likely focus more on the past. Fujimori's father, Alberto Fujimori, governed Peru for 10 years before fleeing the country in November 2000 during a massive corruption scandal. He was later impeached by the congress. He was tried and convicted on corruption and human rights violations in April 2009 and remains in prison in Peru. His image looms large over the election, with opponents claiming the same kind of corrupt government would emerge if Keiko Fujimori is elected. She signed a pledge during the debate to run a clean and transparent government.

The election season has been punctuated by persistent talk of an imminent pardon for Fujimori, whom many Peruvians still credit with turning around the economy.

Mendoza got her start with president Ollanta Humala and helped found his Peruvian Nationalist Party. She was elected to the congress with Humala in 2011, but broke with him after only 11 months over the government's handling of a mining conflict. Opponents link her to Humala's wife, Nadine Heredia, who is under investigation for asset laundering. One of the threads in the case concerns Heredia's alleged ties to corruption-tainted Brazilian construction firm Odebrecht.

Humala is constitutionally barred from seeking another consecutive five-year term.