The energy company Aconcagua Energía is expanding.
Created
less than 10 years ago,
the firm now aims to buy some assets that YPF will soon put up for sale, and is betting on the deregulations of the electricity and gas markets that Javier Milei plans together with the Secretary of Energy, Eduardo Rodríguez Chirillo and his advisor Federico Sturzenegger.
The company was founded as an oil company in 2015 by two former YPF managers and
grew based on the acquisition of conventional assets in Mendoza and Río Negro,
until achieving an expansion into the oil services, gas marketing and electrical energy businesses. , with the purchase of Orazul Energy last December.
In dialogue with
Clarín
, Javier Basso, founder, vice president and finance manager of Aconcagua Energía, stated: "We seek to have a line of business in oil and gas, another in oil services (tower and drilling equipment), and another in generation. electricity, where we started with renewables and now we have a thermal power plant and a hydraulic dam with the purchase of Orazul.
And he became excited about a small business that could have a big leap, thanks to the energy reforms:
gas marketing.
Today, the Wholesale Electricity Market Administration Company (Cammesa) regulates the system and functions as an unavoidable intermediary and, at the same time, an "aggregator" of demand.
The joint venture between private companies and the national State buys gas from oil companies through the Gas Plan - valid until 2028 - and resells it to electricity generators.
But soon
we could return to a scheme like the one that governed between 2018 and 2019
, when oil companies, marketing companies and generators freely negotiated supply contracts and obtained a better income.
Together with Diego Trabucco, who is an industrial engineer, Basso founded Aconcagua Energía with part of his savings.
The founders of the company saw a potential market niche in conventional areas, in the midst of the Vaca Muerta boom (where oil and gas are extracted with a non-conventional technique, shale and tight, which requires larger investments but provides returns. higher).
And
their business idea is to continue expanding while the rest of the oil companies concentrate almost exclusively in the Neuquén Basin.
Recently, the company Petrolera Aconcagua Energía (PAESA) doubled its reserves and obtained an improvement in the credit rating of Fix SCR, the local affiliate of Fitch Ratings, reaching the “A+” category in the local capital market.
With this support,
it will issue debt this Tuesday the 27th to obtain between 20 and 40 million dollars
, which will be used to finance its investment plan.
The organizer and placement agent of these four Negotiable Obligations (ON) with a term of 36 and 48 months is the Bank of Services and Transactions (BST).
Two of the titles will be dollar linked (they are subscribed in pesos and follow the exchange rate quote) and the other two, at a fixed rate in dollars, which
would be around 5 to 7% annually.
In 2023, the group disbursed
US$
114 million in investments,
including the purchase of Orazul Energy from the American investment fund Square Capital for
US$ 9.2 million
and this year it would allocate close to
US$ 90 million
.
Only the Petrolera Aconcagua Energía company obtained an EBITDA close to
US$ 40 million
with a margin of 30%, reached a production of 13,200 barrels of oil equivalent per day and drilled 9 wells.
Another condition that will strengthen your business is the trend of the local crude oil market towards international prices (import and export parities in the domestic market).
That is,
the gasoline and diesel produced by Argentina are paid like in the world
.
After a few years of wide gap, which affected the potential of the producers, today the oil companies charge between
65 and 66 dollars per barrel of crude oil,
while the parity price is around 70 to 72 dollars.