The process of transferring areas in mature basins by YPF continues to advance and although in the sector it is ruled out that this Friday, June 7, it will take place as a ‘first filter’ in which there will still be no precise definitions, the ‘thermometer’ between The actors in the industry cannot fail to observe that some of the names that are circulating have a good chance of being very well positioned for the final stretch.
PECOM’s interest is no mystery, since it has been ‘whitewashed’ by company executives in that meeting they held with the mayor of Comodoro, Othar Macharashvili, during the visit on Monday, April 15.
On that occasion, the company’s Operations and Human Capital manager, Luis Ríos, together with the head of Labor Relations, Eduardo Ochoa, confirmed to the community leader their interest in staying with the operation of some of the areas at stake, considering the trajectory history and the presence they maintain in the San Jorge basin.
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HISTORY OF PECOM IN OIL
Although the Pérez Companc group was the operator for decades of the Pampa del Castillo area, in Chubut, based on contracts with YPF, the privatization of this company in the 90s led the business holding company towards a diversification of activities in other areas, to return to the hydrocarbon sector with force in 2015, with highly specialized services.
That return was from the purchase of Skanska, the Swedish company to which Gregorio Pérez Companc himself, Goyo to his friends, had sold the SADE company, in 1999, precisely when he began to temporarily distance himself from the oil activity. (which would be completed later, in 2002, with the sale of Pecom to Petrobras). That operation was agreed upon for 70 million dollars and the buyback was for a similar amount.
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In 2018 it acquired the Bolland company, with a new boost for the depth pump manufacturer in Comodoro Rivadavia. The operation was reported at 4.5 billion pesos, which in the blue dollar at that time would mean about 120 million dollars.
It was reported at that time that the company had important growth projects in the region, based on the services provided to YPF, both in Santa Cruz, in the emblematic Los Perales area, and in Manantiales Behr.
Precisely in the Chubut area, one of the directors detailed the moment of that operation, in an interview published by ADNSURthat the company had installed a tertiary recovery plant for YPF and was in charge of its operation, in one of the technological pillars with which it aims to also reactivate the other mature areas that YPF will stop operating in this region.
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Therefore, speculation suggests that the area of interest for this company would be linked to Escalante-Trébol, where there have also been some tertiary pilots in recent years.
With more than 5,000 employees and an annual turnover of more than $800 million, the company was recently distinguished, for the second consecutive year, as the best employer in the energy industry, according to the ‘Randstad Employer Brand Research 2024’. In turn, PECOM rose to fifth place in the Top 10 of the most attractive companies to work for in Argentina.
In the San Jorge Gulf, specifically, there are 1,400 workersof which 850 are found in Chubut.
Among the ‘scrolls’ to position itself, the leadership of PECOM has names strongly linked to the recent history of YPF, such as the leadership of its current CEO, Gustavo Astié, former head of Vaca Muerta in Neuquén and later head of mature areas of the oil company, before changing companies.
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ENVIRONMENTAL AND OTHER LIABILITIES
The company has achieved strong positions and solid references in the energy sector, where in case of ‘winning the race’ it will have to assume the ‘liabilities’ that YPF will leave in the region, not only those linked to environmental matters, but something that There is beginning to be talk with concern in the San Jorge basin: “the labor liability”, based on an operation that, many already discount, will be lower than the current one.
Regarding ‘liabilities’, the company founded by Gregorio Pérez Companc must face another not so pleasant passage in judicial courts. This is the trial against the former Minister of Federal Planning of the Nation, Julio de Vido, for that case linked to the alleged payment of bribes and fraud for the construction of gas pipelines in the north and south of the country.
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In addition to De Vido and José López, that remembered former official of “the convent bags”, the trial is faced by 9 directors of the Skanska company and 17 of other companies, accused of issuing apocryphal billing.
Almost two decades after those events, the trial began on April 8, according to the site ‘Fiscales.gob.ar’. What does PECOM have to do with it? As a buyer of Skanska, which is the firm responsible for paying the alleged bribes, she suffered the seizure of accounts that, according to the update presented at the beginning of the judicial process, amounted to just over 150 million pesos.
