Brazil's government plans to send new rules aimed at opening the country's natural gas sector to greater competition and increasing consumption of the fuel to Congress for approval by the end of 2017, a Mines and Energy Ministry Official said Monday.

  The National Petroleum Agency, or ANP, and ministry have been gathering comments and ideas from oil companies, gas distributors, and industry and trade groups since last year, when the government launched the initiative dubbed "Gas to Grow." The program was launched after state-led producer Petrobras, the government's longtime development engine, said it would reduce its role in the gas industry as part of a broad divestment program.

  "The proposals have been consolidated and we've sent them to the president's office for improvements," Symone Araujo, the director of the Mines and Energy Ministry's natural gas department, said on the sidelines of the Brazilian Petroleum Institute's 18th annual natural gas seminar.

  The president's office has not yet decided whether it will send the new regulatory regime to Congress as a bill or as a presidential decree, Araujo said. Presidential decrees can sometimes move quicker through the halls of government toward approval, but a wave of the measures is already clogging the pipeline, so a bill may be approved more quickly.