The block of Buenos Aires Senators Freedom Advances -made up of Sergio Vargas, Carlos Kikuchi and Silvana Ventura- presented this Wednesday a bill in the PBA Legislature so that White Bay be declared as export and production platform for liquefied natural gas through its port.
The initiative of the libertarian legislators was proposed in the midst of the dispute between the province of Buenos Aires and Río Negro over the installation of the liquefaction plant of the companies YPF and Petronas.
This is a work that will initially be carried out in the area of the port of the Bahia city, but now the governor Alberto Weretilneck negotiates to take it to Patagonian territory.
It was in this context that the liberal bloc presented the aforementioned bill, which also highlights the resources that Bahía Blanca has to carry out the engineering and mentions the need for the city to have the support of public policies to continue growing.
“This town has port infrastructure adapted and equipped to the safe and efficient handling of hydrocarbons and chemical products, which is essential for the production and export of LNG, since specialized facilities and compliance with rigorous safety standards are required. At the same time, it has a developed infrastructure, including docks, storage tanks, loading and unloading terminals as well as established land and maritime connections, which allows costs and times to be significantly reduced,” the document reads.
This continues: “In addition, the city of Bahía Blanca is located strategically located in the central region of the Argentine Atlantic coastfacilitating connectivity with the main gas consumption centers both nationally and internationally.”
Likewise, the initiative highlights that the bay offers favorable environmental conditions for port operations and industrial activities and has dry docks that allow large vessels to be accommodated. “What makes it unique in Argentina,” they emphasize in the text.
“As is public knowledge, the city of Bahía Blanca has a long history as a center of activity in the energy sector, especially in the oil and gas industry. This accumulated experience provides specialized knowledge and qualified human resources that can be used to support offshore operations,” continues the project promoted by La Libertad Avanza.
It concludes: “Everything mentioned above generates a benefit for the hundreds of thousands of Buenos Aires families who directly or indirectly make a living from said sector. It is for all of the above that I ask my peers to support this initiative.”
The presentation of this initiative occurs while the National Congress debates the Bases Law in the Upper House. In this sense, if this legal body is not approved, especially the chapter on incentives for large investments, the Large Investment Regime, or RIGIthe project for the liquefied natural gas plant, LNG, and surrounding infrastructure to export the gas and definitively boost Vaca Muerta will not be possible.
This plant is the necessary facility to transform the gas and make it exportable by means of ships, the same ones that the country imports today and that generated a strong impact on the spending of dollars by the Treasury and the BCRA in recent years (although much less since The Néstor Kirchner Gasduct works, which injects fluid into the national network and saves, in part, those imports).
The project that was born in the government of Alberto Fernandez It has full continuity in this one. And it is no wonder: it is the largest infrastructure project in Argentine history that would allow, from 2031 and if official forecasts are met, total annual exports of around USD 30,000 million (gas and also crude oil).
