Page 10 - LatAmOil Week 45 2019

LatAmOil ARGENTINA LatAmOil
Tango LNG loads first commercial cargo
ARGENTINA’S national oil company (NOC) YPF has loaded its first commercial cargo of LNG from Tango, a floating gas liquefaction facility anchored near Buenos Aires.
According to press reports, YPF transferred the LNG onto Excalibur, an LNG tanker owned by Excelerate Energy, in late October. The ship, which was also used to deliver Tango LNG’s first test cargo to Cheniere Energy (US) earlier this year, is now anchored near Bahia Blanca.
YPF has not said exactly how much LNG it loaded onto the Excalibur. But it did call a tender that expired on November 6 for the sale of 2.1tn British thermal units (about 41,500 tonnes) of LNG on a delivered-ex-ship (DES) basis.
As of press time, the NOC had not revealed the results of the tender. It has indicated, though, that the cargo will be exported to a customer somewhere in the Atlantic Basin.
Reuters quoted an unnamed trade source as saying that the LNG was probably headed
for Europe or the Americas rather than a long- haul destination. Tango LNG’s first commercial cargo “will likely end up in Europe or Americas, as they don’t have the shipping length,” he told the news agency.
The floating LNG (FLNG) unit takes about 40 days to load each full cargo, Reuters’ source noted. Tango LNG’s next shipment will be loaded onto Methane Kari Elin, a tanker owned by Gaslog LNG Services (Greece), he added.
Argentina exported its first LNG cargo in June of this year, several months after taking delivery of an FLNG unit from Exmar (Bel- gium). The vessel is processing gas from Vaca Muerta, a shale formation that contains substan- tial reserves of crude oil and natural gas.
Tango LNG, which can turn out 500,000 tonnes per year (tpy) of LNG, is currently Argentina’s only gas liquefaction plant. YPF has said it wants to build another facility with a capacity of 5mn tpy. ™
Oil and gas executives react to election of new president in Argentina
THE election of a new president in Argentina has spurred concerns about the prospects for continued investment in Vaca Muerta, a shale formation that contains both gas and oil.
Alberto Fernandez, the new president-elect, has indicated that he does not want to discour- age the development of the basin. Nevertheless, he is considerably more keen on government intervention in the economy and has said that he will regulate the energy sector more heavily than his predecessor Mauricio Macri, who generally favoured a free-market approach.
The stakes are high, given that Vaca Muerta’s reserves are large enough to allow Argentina to shed its dependence on oil and gas imports. As such, industry executives said during a confer- ence in Mar del Plata earlier this week that they were nervous about the upcoming political tran- sition, Bloomberg reported.
“Vaca Muerta can change the course of history for Argentina. The rock is there. We need clear, steady rules of play,” commented Ricardo Markous, the director of gas and power at Argentina’s Tecpetrol. Markous’ company is a division of the Techint Group, which has invested $2bn in shale gas projects over the last two years.
German Macchi, the Argentina country manager for Pluspetrol, also expressed caution. “This is a crunch moment. We’re waiting for
clarity to continue,” he said.
Danny Massacese, chief operating officer for
Argentina’s largest privately owned company Pan American Energy, said investors could lose interest in Argentina. If Fernandez’s admin- istration takes steps such as repudiating debt, limiting exports or imposing tighter controls on currency, Argentinian firms will have a harder time accessing capital markets, he said. “If we’re fenced in by country risk, this type of develop- ment [that we hope to see] won’t be possible,” he was quoted as saying by Bloomberg.
Daniel Ridelener, the CEO of Argentina’s Transportadora Gas del Norte (TGN), said he hoped that Fernandez’s election would not derail his company’s plan to seek foreign part- ners for the construction of a 650-km pipeline to transport production from Vaca Muerta to world markets. “The opportunity is now,” he remarked. “If we sleep on this for 10 years, it’ll be too late.” ™
President-elect Alberto Fernandez (Photo: EPA)
P10
w w w . N E W S B A S E . c o m Week 45 14•November•2019