The cold anticipated its arrival and the Government had to cut off gas to industries and SMEs.
Given the advance of the polar wave, the Government will move forward with natural gas cuts to some industries in order to avoid supply problems amid a demand that has almost doubled.
Cammesa, the company in charge of energy dispatch, urgently put out to tender the purchase of 12 shipments of fuel oil and diesel to address the increase in gas consumption.
But specialists warn that part of this shortfall could have been covered if the government had completed the construction of the compressor plants for the Néstor Kirchner gas pipeline.
The brake on public works delayed the work and now an additional 500 million dollars will have to be disbursed in June to meet the increased demand.
The Néstor Kirchner Gasduct transports 11 million cubic meters of gas per day (m3/d), but if the Compressor plants ofTrayén, Salliqueló and Mercedes were in operation, the capacity would have already been expanded to 22 million.
If the funds had been allocated when appropriate, the plants would have been completed and the gas transportation capacity from Vaca Muerta would have doubled.
TheTrayén compressor plant, run by Sacde, could come into operation in mid-June, which would allow an additional 5 million m3 per day to be injected into the system.
That would represent a saving of up to 350 million dollars per year in replacing liquid fuels and importing LNG.
Meanwhile, the Salliqueló plant, which Contreras is building, would only be ready in September.
In the case of the Mercedes plant, it is delayed.
The delay is mainly explained because during the first months of the government Enarsa stopped paying the construction companies that are in charge of the works.
He owes $30 million to Sacde and $10 million to Contreras, which forced both companies to work below their capacity.
If the state company had paid in a timely manner, both projects would already be completed.
The debt carried by the national government reaches 40 million dollars, but the decision not to pay now forces it to disburse 500 million, when with the gas pipeline at full capacity it could have needed to import, but for less than half of that value.
