Energía Argentina and Yacimientos Petrolófilos Fiscales Bolivianos (YPFB) agreed on the provision of natural gas in Northern Argentina for August and September.
This supply will allow the central/northern area of the country to be supplied with up to 4 MMm3/day depending on the requirements of internal demand, while the Northern Gas Pipeline Reversal project, currently underway, is completed. In this way, the gas, which previously came from Bolivia and flowed from north to south, will flow in the opposite direction, from south to north, and distribute the growing “unconventional” gas production of Vaca Muerta, from the Neuquén Basin. .
It is estimated that the gas pipeline will be in operation on September 15, allowing the northern provinces to be transported with an additional 5 MMm3/day to the current ones and in a second stage another 4 MMm3/day.
The reversal of the Gasduct is the only national public work tendered and initiated by the government of Javier Milei and it is the type of works that the Development Bank of Latin America and the Caribbean prioritizes within the framework of its strategy to support the “energy transition”. It is for this reason that the entity, better known as CAF, lent Argentina USD 540 million for the works.
The total budget for the work is USD 720 million, of which this credit covers three quarters. The remaining quarter will be covered by a fund for electrical exports from Argentina, although the increase in construction costs in dollars (a recurring problem of the current economic scheme, in which the monthly increase pattern of the dollar continues to lag far behind inflation) makes it probable that the final cost in dollars will be higher than initially budgeted.
The work, which will provide gas to the provinces of Santiago del Estero, Tucumán, Catamarca, Salta, Jujuy, La Rioja and Córdoba, is progressing under the supervision of the state-owned Enarsa and is being carried out by the Transitory Business Union (UTE) that was formed Techint and Sacde.
The companies also built, at record speed, the first section, between the towns ofTrayen (Neuquén) and Salliqueló (Buenos Aires) of the “President Néstor Kirchner Gasduct” inaugurated on July 9 of last year. However, due to the government’s brake on public works, its compressor plants were not completed and the gas pipeline operates at half its capacity. The consequence of not carrying out these works that had to be ready for the winter was the need to import fuels more expensive, for some USD 500 million that were not foreseen.
