The PAE proposal coincides with the growing demand for LNG in the world, necessary to sustain the global economic recovery after the pandemic and to meet the decarbonization goals, in a climate of international tension due to the price of energy derived from the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. Bulgheroni predicted that in the current context of geopolitical reordering and energy transition, the demand for LNG will not only grow, but its consumption will increase exponentially in the world. An opportunity in the midst of the crisis.
“The context was already complicated from before. Now Europe has to replace Russia’s natural gas because national security policies take precedence over the market, but there the problem is LNG because there are no additional quantities of supply to cover that demand”, he assessed.
As Ámbito anticipated, Martín Guzmán spoke about this issue with the main oil companies in the United States during his recent tour of Houston. There, the possibility of increasing the activity in Vaca Muerta, the supply of LNG ships that the country needs this year and the feasibility of installing an LNG plant in Patagonia were mentioned. The US has eight active LNG plants and more than 1,000 tankers sailing the oceans, mainly affected by the supply in Europe and Asia, due to the lack of Russian gas. Its production capacity reaches 400 million cubic meters of gas per day and, on top of that, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (Ferc) has already approved the construction of 14 new LNG terminals. An example of what is happening is Spain, a net importer of gas, which until recently was supplied with 50% of the gas from Algeria. But as of January, the US surpassed that country as the first supplier, with 30% of imported gas, against 28% for Algeria.
In fact, today for Argentina the supply of LNG for the coming winter is one of the great concerns left by the war. In 2021, the Government paid shipments of US$8.5 per million BTU and demanded a total of almost US$1.1 billion, but today, due to the impact of the Russian invasion, LNG skyrocketed to peaks of almost US$50. It is estimated that some US$4.5 billion will be disbursed this year for LNG alone. Given this situation, Bulgheroni considered it necessary to “reorganize priorities and find a balance” to “develop Vaca Muerta and the other oil and gas projects because it will allow the country’s matrix to change.” To achieve this, he said that it is essential “to expand the transportation capacity and find the country’s markets with the world because after many years of development, the industry knows how to produce efficiently and it is time to develop it.”
Another of the proposals was the possibility of joining Vaca Muerta with the Norte Grande, “closing the ring” with the carriers TGS and TGN to start looking for foreign markets, in particular the demanding south of Brazil, a country to which it could “export in a sustained way”. This demand could be supplied with a Bs. As.-Porto Alegre ring and a second from Montevideo, even redirecting the northern gas pipeline where gas is currently transported from Bolivia to Argentina, in order to “be more efficient and competitive” as a whole. with volumes of 30 to 40 million cubic meters per day for the main market in the region, with a focus on industrialists from São Paulo.
Source: Ambito
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