The new offices of the Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources of Neuquén They share the building with the Institute of Gambling (IJAN) but if there is one thing clear it is that the minister Gustavo Medele They do not want to “demonstrate” the environmental future of the province. With a forecast that, in the most conservative case, indicates that, thanks to Vaca Muerta, Neuquén will double oil production in 2028, the government stood up and set the condition one to companies that want to extend conventional concessions that present, and can finance, a comprehensive environmental remediation plan.
The position is transcendent, since There are 25 hydrocarbon concessions in Neuquén that expire between next year and 2028. But in addition, in that list of potential extension requests there are the 9 areas that YPF put up for sale through the Andes Projectan initiative that, with a total of 30 blocks throughout the country, has already aroused the interest of more than 60 companies and business unions.
In addition to those areas for sale, YPF also has 4 other blocks that the flag oil company did not open to offers because would seek to renegotiate or reconvert, since these are key blocks such as Loma La Lata and Sitio Hernández.
A situation, facing a near expiration, in which companies such as Oilstone, Tecpetrol, Pluspetrol, TotalEnergies, Aconcagua Energía, Petróleos Sudamericanos and Petrolsur.
“I was born here and I am going to die here. And my view is more on the passive than on the flow. We cannot afford to ignore that number one issue in this entire process, which is environmental liabilities.“Medele said in an exclusive interview with Energía On.
The minister explained before the process of selling areas that YPF opened that “We cannot allow a company that cannot respond to that liability to remain (an area). That is the big problem with the sale of YPF.” And he remarked that “For us the first look is that of the passive, In other words, all that is good, and then the project he brings, what he is going to do in the field.”
A point that is common to all requests for renegotiation or extension of concessions, on which he emphasized that “when we see the work plan, we are going to tell some company that I love you very much, but it is not convenient for you, you are going to overturn. And alsoOur responsibility is to ensure that these people do not leave us a problem in 10 years.”
Medele, who after an extensive career in the industry comes from being vice president of Excellence and Occupational Safety of YPFdetailed that the correct procedure when reversing an area, the return, whether in force or due to expiration of the concession, is that “the one who leaves has to clean that field, they have to clean abandoning the wells, lifting pipes or leaving them inert, disassembling plants and also seeing the spills, the liabilities that they have.”
Audits began
With 25 concessions coming to an end before 2028, Medele announced that the province has already taken action on the matter and created a special interdisciplinary team that has already begun to carry out an audit of the areas, a proper survey of the environmental liabilities and the safe abandonment work that must be done.
“We have already started doing audits with our internal teams. We have the undersecretary of Environment within the Ministry of Energy and we are with the Environment and the undersecretary of Hydrocarbons putting together audit work teams,” Medele said.
And he added that “we are already going to the field, we started going a month ago voluntarily to see the big fields. The teams are working with us to do mapping.”
Neuquén’s position is clear: “The objective is to have our own diagnosis and not wait for the company to say what its remediation plan is, but to have our view of what needs to be done in the four elements that are wells, pipelines, plants, and any spills that have occurred.”
Medele reiterated that “of these four elements we have to have our look, our inventory. “So if five concessions come together we won’t collapse the team.”
“Whoever comes who wants to buy through this farm out will have to say why they are interested in entering here, what they are going to do. Because an investment plan is argumentative even if they say 100 million, We want them to say what they are going to do in barrels, and secondly how they are going to ensure the liability, because If YPF leaves, this company leaves all the liabilities, let it come”, he stated.
The Minister of Energy remarked that “our view is more on liabilities, because today you can have wells with low production but at some point they will be a liability that must be insured.”
And he warned that “in Neuquén we have a different position perhaps than other provinces such as Santa Cruz or Chubut, We with Vaca Muerta plan to double production by 2028, so it is logical that we are more concerned about liabilities than production.because it may be that the liabilities end up being more expensive than the potential assets in most old concessions.”
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- These are the conventional wells that Neuquén estimates will have to be abandoned in the short term.
In recent months they were several companies that approached the Medele counter especially interested in conventional fields, since the official indicated that “Today there is almost no room in Vaca Muerta.”
“Some have come companies from Mexico, Brazil, the United States to see what the conventional is like. They are other types of companies, specialized in the conventional, but we have to look very carefully at the issue of liabilities, how they plan to resolve it, if they can solve it or if in a few years they melt down and leave us a truck and a trailer as payment,” he said.
Medele stressed that “We are the generation that has to do this to make it look good, because we have a production growth model with Vaca Muerta, and that is why we can dedicate ourselves to leaving things well done.”
