Although 2024 is a year of strong contrasts, in which several sectors of the economy show negative indicators, In Vaca Muerta the positive signs are accumulating and mark a clear acceleration of activity. Possibly the most encouraging fact is that shale formation is adding special equipment that for several years remained almost frozen.
just two months ago The Tenaris firm, the arm of the Techint Group that has its own special services division, gave the most anticipated news in the sector to add a new fracture seta set of high-pressure pumps that allow the rock that is Vaca Muerta to break to encourage and allow the oil and gas trapped inside to flow.
This set was the tenth that is active in Vaca Muertaand it represented a great advance since practically since the beginning of the pandemic – or rather of the obstacles to imports that the economic emergency brought about – no equipment of this type was added.
And two months after the big news from Tenaris, Energía On confirmed that in a few more weeks, In July, another fracture set is scheduled to come into operation, now from the Canadian firm Calfrac.
The special services company has had a high-power fracture set in operation for some time in Vaca Muerta and with this new equipment, which will have about 25 bombs, bets on being a major player in a segment that has few members.
- 30 to 50
- Millions of dollars is the investment required for each new fracture set or high-power driller that is incorporated.
According to what was surveyed, unlike the set incorporated by Tenaris, which is made up of pumps entirely made in Spain, The Canadian firm managed to unblock the import tangle and Their bombs will be imported, and in fact they are already in the country.
The Vaca Muerta fractures market is strongly led by the North American company Halliburton with four sets. The French one is still active SLBthe former Schlumberger that has two sets and is now in direct competition with Tenariswhich also has two sets.
Calfrac seeks to climb to that shared second place, remaining with only one set Weatherford and one step further back in terms of pump power is the set of San Antonio International (SAI).
Vaca Muerta and the 34 drills
Although the preferred metric to analyze the activity in Vaca Muerta is the stages of fracture, the drillers – also called rigs or drills – are no less important. And in fact a mathematical relationship is used to measure the “health” of an unconventional play like this one, between the number of fracture sets and the number of active drillers.
That relationship is of tthree perforators for each fracture setsince with a smaller number of sets what was seen a few years ago in Vaca Muerta occurs, which is a greater number of drilled wells waiting to be fractured, the so-called DUCs (drill uncompleted) wells.
When the number of drillers drops from that ratio of 3 to 1, something happens that was unfortunately seen at the end of last year in Vaca Muerta, and that is that the Fracture sets must stop their operations waiting for drillers to complete the next wells.
ANDThis balance, with 11 fracture sets, is then at 33 drillers, a value that today is in line with the 34 teams that drill in Vaca Muerta and it is expected that In a short time new towers will be added, since at least the Nabors firm announced together with Vista the arrival of a new rig to the country.
These 34 drillers today represent more than two thirds of all the equipment of this type that are active in the country, and have in YPF to the great plaintiff, since it occupies 16 of them. The list of active rigs in Vaca Muerta also includes 4 working for View and also Pan American Energy (PAE)3 for Pluspetrol and same amount for Tecpetrol.
Two rigs drill at the request of Shell1 for Chevronanother for TotalEnergies1 for Capex and 1 very special one for Phoenix Global Resourcesgiven that it is carrying out the first pad of wells towards Vaca Muerta but in Río Negro.
