The president of the board of directors of the oil company controlled by the Argentine state, YPF, Pablo González, announced this Thursday an investment of 10,000 million dollars in a project to industrialize gas in alliance with the Malaysian oil company Petronas.
“We have been working on the LNG (liquefied natural gas) project for two years,” González explained. “It determines an important investment. The first stage is almost 10 billion dollars. Think that you have to invest in production, invest in a special gas pipeline and build a port.”
González, in an event organized by the newspaper Clarín, anticipated the announcement that will be made later of the strategic alliance between YPF and Petronas for the industrialization of non-conventional gas in an act that will be headed by the Argentine president, Alberto Fernández.
“We are going to score a goal,” González enthused.
“We are very happy to be able to ratify the decision with Petronas”, noting that one of the world’s most important companies in the hydrocarbon field, with activity in 50 countries, and the third largest producer of LNG, with a presence in 17 countries, “is trusting in Argentina”.
He recalled that Petronas has known Argentina and YPF for eight years, through a relationship that began in 2014.
The investment creates “the possibility of turning Argentina into a player in the global gas market, as a net exporter of gas,” González explained.
The director of YPF foresaw that “until it begins to export (gas) it will take at least six years”, for which he said that “it has to be a State policy” since the project will be accompanied by several governments .
González added that YPF is producing 40% non-conventional and predicted that in the next four years, non-conventional will exceed conventional.
Argentina has the large Vaca Muerta field, which is the second in unconventional gas in the world and the fourth in unconventional oil.
However, González pointed out the difficulty of planning an investment in Argentina because “it is producing more energy than it can transport.”