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Argentina will receive a million-dollar investment to facilitate the export of gas from Vaca Muerta to Brazil and Chile

2023-02-01T17:24:27.423Z


CAF- Development Bank of Latin America will contribute 540 million dollars for the construction of a network of gas pipelines. Its vice president, Christian Asinelli, defends the use of natural gas in the region as a "just transition energy"


For more than a decade, Vaca Muerta has represented hope for the battered Argentine economy that has not yet materialized.

The 30,000 kilometer field located in Patagonia makes Argentina the second country with the most shale gas resources in the world.

But getting it out and transporting it has proven to be a complex task since it began to be exploited in 2012. Now, a new investment agreement has revived the illusion of those who hope for a definitive takeoff of the deposit.

Economy Minister Sergio Massa announced last week that he had reached an agreement with CAF-Development Bank of Latin America* to finance a gas pipeline that will facilitate exports to Chile and Brazil.

“It will be 540 million dollars to build the La Carlota-Tío Pujio gas pipeline, the Reversal del Norte and the compression plants,” the minister reported on his Twitter account.

The investment, which will be approved in March by CAF's board of directors, provides for the construction of kilometers of pipelines to transport gas from Vaca Muerta, in the west of the country, to Santa Fe, in the northeast.

That, said the minister, would increase "the possibilities of gas export volumes" to neighboring countries.

With these works we will be able to supply the entire north with Vaca Muerta gas and increase the possibilities of gas export volumes to Chile and Brazil.

pic.twitter.com/6MuGH2jqgK

— Sergio Massa (@SergioMassa) January 25, 2023

According to data from the Reuters agency, with these works the country hopes to be able to reverse the deficit in the energy balance of 5,000 million dollars registered in 2022 and achieve a surplus of some 12,000 million dollars in 2025. “From the point of view of the productive activities in the country, obviously developing the potential of Vaca Muerta is very important for the economy”, acknowledges the vice president of CAF, Christian Asinelli, in an interview with América Futura.

The official stressed that the work to be financed by the multilateral organization will be beneficial for the region's energy integration and will reduce Argentina's dependence on current imports of Bolivian and Chilean gas.

A “just transition energy”

"With this infrastructure work, what is being done is to connect the Vaca Muerta gas with a section of a gas pipeline that will allow gas to be brought from the south of the country to the north," he explains.

In addition, "with a series of investments in five gas reconversion plants," these gas pipelines can be linked with Bolivia to send gas to Brazil, on the one hand, and to northern Chile on the other.

According to his estimates, if everything goes as planned, the construction of 132 kilometers of pipes and the conversion of the five plants that would allow gas to be transferred from northern Argentina to Bolivia could be ready in less than two years.

Faced with criticism from some sectors that consider that natural gas is not clean energy -since it emits methane, one of the gases that contributes the most to climate change-, CAF defends its use as a "transition energy" towards a green matrix through fair processes that benefit the population of the region.

"For countries like Argentina, it is a just transition energy," says Asinelli.

"For Latin America and the Caribbean, what we need is to look for spaces that improve, from the environmental point of view, but without forgetting the people, the needs, social growth and the reduction of poverty," he added to the point out that in the region there is a "consensus different from that of Europe" on energy issues.

"Gas for us is a transition energy that will help us to achieve the standards of the sustainable development goals, but through a process that is fair for our countries, where we can use our natural resources by lowering the amount of emissions , that is, by stopping the use of coal plants and using gas, which is clearly an energy that pollutes much less.

It is not the final objective, but it is the path that can lead us towards a transition that we call fair, where the human and the social are not forgotten either”, he adds.

Asinelli recognizes that those who make public policies have to find a balance between benefiting populations, caring for people, and making the right decisions to care for the environment, a task that, he says, "sometimes is not easy."

In this sense, the CAF official highlights that the decision to invest in Vaca Muerta has been made after analyzing the previous environmental impact studies and that the disbursements will be made as the work progresses.

"I think that this process of using gas as a transition energy, if done well, is clearly going to bring more development, which is what we are looking for."

* CAF-Development Bank of Latin America finances the 'América Futura' project.

Source: elparis

All news articles on 2023-02-01

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