:quality(85)//cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/infobae/JQ6KKZPJJRHIVCYDXNX3NNZK5A.jpg "Sierras Blancas-Allen: they inaugurated an oil pipeline that will release the increased production of Vaca Muerta 1")
The consortium in charge of the project, led by Shell with a 60% stake, accompanied by Pan American Energy (25%) and Pluspetrol, today inaugurated the pipeline Sierras Blancas-Allen, which will increase oil transport capacity from Vaca Muerta to refineries and export points. With an extension of 105 kilometers and 16 inches in diameter, the energy infrastructure works allow the collection and transport of up to 125,000 barrels of oil per day.
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Shell operates in formation dead cow the regions of Sierras Blancas, Cruz de Lorena and Coirón Amargo. But the works will make it possible to transport not only the production of the company but also that of the other oil operators that the pipeline crosses on its way.
The works, which have been operational since the end of 2022, consist of extending the evacuation capacity of oil produced at Vaca Muerta to processing centers (refineries), and the export of crude oil.
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“Fifty contractors worked on the construction of this pipeline, which was built in a record time of 9 months with an investment of $85 million,” noted the Secretary of Energy. Flavia Royon during the opening ceremony.
“Today is a very important day for the Argentinian energy sector” (Massa)
The official also pointed out that thanks to this work as well as to the Néstor Kirchner gas pipeline, the country will go from a “negative balance of 5,000 million dollars to a positive balance of at least 8,000 million dollars, for this we we need infrastructure, on which the national state has already taken the first steps”.
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It will be operated by Oleoductos del Valle (Oldelval) and will be connected at Allen to the main pipeline that crosses the Neuquén basin. It will expand the current network, pave the way for increased production and the existing bottleneck in the intermediate infrastructure due to the large increase in production that occurred at Vaca Muerta. To take only the case of Shell, production has gone from 6,000 to 8,000 barrels per day in 2018 to around 45,000 currently.
Sergio MassaMinister of Economy, assured that “today is a very important day for the Argentine energy sector”, via his Twitter account.
“The inauguration of the Sierras Blancas-Allen pipeline will increase the production evacuation capacity of operators in the basin, which currently limits the scale growth of projects,” Massa said through social networks.
In addition, he pointed out that “this 105 kilometer work between the provinces of Neuquén and Río Negro will connect Vaca Muerta to the main pipeline of Oldelval and its Duplicate project, and will strengthen the export routes of the basin (Oldelval-OTASA )”.
“Finally, after the suspension by the previous government, we favor the return of Shell to the 929 regime”, underlined the minister.
“The inauguration of the Sierras Blancas-Allen pipeline will increase the production evacuation capacity of the operators of the basin, which today limits the growth of scale of the projects” (Massa)
Ricardo Rodriguez, president of Shell Argentina, assured that the biggest technical challenge in the basin in the short term is the evacuation of production from our operations. “With this project, the first of its kind with private investment, we seek with our partners to make a concrete contribution to the development of Vaca Muerta,” he said. “This is also Shell’s first midstream investment in the country. We are very proud and grateful to our team and to the contractors involved for building the structure safely and in record time,” he said.
The construction, carried out by Techint in association with the local company SIMA, was completed in a record time of nine months and employed more than 650 people and around 50 contractors and material suppliers, mainly from the region.
For its part, Marcos Bulgheroni, CEO of the Pan American Energy Group, said that “the inauguration of this pipeline is a clear example of the coordination of national and provincial policies that allow the investments necessary for the development of Vaca Muerta”. “Over the past few years, PAE has regularly invested in the half-way to evacuate production from the Neuquén basin. On the part of industry and the state, we must continue to invest in gas pipelines, oil pipelines and maritime terminals to unlock the country’s export potential,” he said. He also pointed out that the inauguration of the Sierras Blancas-Allen pipeline will allow PAE to evacuate production from its exploited areas of Coirón Amargo Sureste (CASE) and Aguada Cánepa.
“Participating in this project is very important to us given Pluspetrol’s development plans for the coming years at Vaca Muerta. This pipeline gives us the possibility of having more capacity to transport liquids and, thus, continue to contribute to the growth and development of the formation”, he commented. german machiCountry Manager of Pluspetrol in Argentina.
“This is also Shell’s first midstream investment in the country. We are very proud of the construction of the work safely and in record time, “he said” (Rodríguez)
Decree 929/2013 was the first regulation to encourage the development of Vaca Muerta, issued by former President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, to quickly lead the joint investment of Chevron and YPF in Loma Campana, the first large-scale exploitation of shale oil of a dead cow.
However, no oil company has ever been allowed to agree to export 20% of its oil and gas production without restraint and to dispose of the foreign exchange generated by these sales abroad, which is the spirit of this decree.
Finally, this year the government established the requirements and conditions that Vaca Muerta oil companies must meet to access the benefits of the decree.
During the act of inauguration, the governor of Río Negro, Arabela Carreraswho stressed that “to accelerate the process of exporting and exploiting our wealth, we need the private sector to have a strong commitment alongside the national state, through investments such as those in this pipeline, because at the end of the day, the Private sector is the great engine of development”.
For its part, Omar GutierrezGovernor of Neuquén, pointed out that: “over the past year, 6 billion dollars have been invested in Vaca Muerta, this 2023 we project another 8 billion, that is, we are on the verge of d ‘achieve and exceed the $10 billion goal’.
“Only in the Vaca Muerta basin in Neuquén, by the end of 2023 we expect to produce 400,000 barrels per day and we will exceed 100 million cubic meters of gas in the intensity of winter,” said Gutierrez points out.
According to the governor, if Argentina had not invested in Vaca Muerta in 2022, $20.3 billion would have been spent on energy imports, while this year the country will save another $22 billion.
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