Federico Bernal, Undersecretary of Hydrocarbons, received Shell’s local authorities to review the company’s project and investment agenda. Bernal highlighted the importance of the Sierras Blancas/Allen Pipeline, built by the Shell’s consortium (60%), PAE (25%) and Pluspetrol (15%), with inauguration date for February 14. “It is a strategic project that will increase the operator’s production evacuation capacity in this basin. Currently, the situation we are is very similar to the one we’ve inherited with the licensed natural gas transportation system and saturated capacity. At that moment, the government’s response was the President Néstor Kirchner Gas Pipeline construction”, said Bernal.
Ricardo Rodríguez explained that the new pipeline “will connect Vaca Muerta with OLDELVAL’s trunk pipeline and its Duplicar Plus project, reinforcing the basin’s export routes (OLDELVAL – OTASA) and providing a transportation capacity of 125,000 bpd”. Rodríguez also highlighted this to be the “first operator’s private investment for the construction of a midstream pipeline in Vaca Muerta, and also the first one made by Shell Argentina in midstream, 108 years after settling in Argentina”. The pipeline’s construction will be in Techint/ SIMA command and the operation in charge of Oldelval. Resources and investments, in line with the objectives of promoting local added value through the hydrocarbon industry, alongside more than 50 national and regional contractors and suppliers, were involved in the pipeline’s construction.
In addition, Bernal and the authorities of Shell Argentina also discussed the company’s request progress within the framework of Decree 929. Shell has been operating in Neuquén for a decade, focusing on Vaca Muerta. During the meeting, the highest authority of the oil company, informed Bernal that the company’s investment has been of more than 2,000 million dollars; only in 2022, it invested 500 million dollars in the development of resources. So far, the results of this investment have positioned the company as the first private non-conventional oil producer in the Neuquina Basin, with an average production of 45,000 barrels of oil per day (bpd). In particular, in Sierras Blancas, Shell has an installed processing capacity of 42,000 bpd and generates more than 3,000 direct and indirect jobs. Regarding investments in hydrocarbons and infrastructure projects, Bernal said: “Argentina is currently receiving lots of investments. By 2023, we expect 9.5 billion dollars investments at national level in exploration and exploitation. This implies a year-on-year jump of 20%, being 36% more than in 2019 and the highest figure since 2015.” Finally, regarding Shell’s participation in this growth process, he expressed: “We are very pleased to have Shell’s participation and commitment, which, as the Minister of Economy, Sergio Massa, has repeatedly highlighted, is the logical response of the sector’s players to a credible and sustainable economic development program, where the articulation between the National State and the private sector provides the necessary and sufficient conditions to make the transformation of our productive matrix a reality”.
SOURCE: www.energiaynegocios.com.ar