Page 7 - LatAmOil Week 38 2019

LatAmOil COLOMBIA LatAmOil
 “In the first phase of the four pilots, they will require investments of around $600mn per year,” he said. “So we’ll surely have two, even up to three years, with investment of that amount, and once we pass to the production phase they will require investments of around $5bn per year.”
Lloreda was speaking shortly after Colom- bia’s Council of State said that its extension of the country’s temporary ban on fracking did not apply to pilot projects. On September 24, he said he expected Colombian authorities to developanewpolicyregimegoverningthecon- troversial practice. “We have faith the govern- ment will soon have those instruments so we can advance,” he remarked.
German Espinosa, the head of the oil ser- vices association Campetrol, spoke similarly, saying at the same press briefing that policy formation was crucial following the Council of State’s ruling that the pilot projects will remain separate from the larger issue of fracking, now the subject of a lawsuit. “The pilots have nothing to do with the regulation that exists currently, so surely what will happen is that [the govern- ment] will need to create some technical proto- cols and the national environmental authorities will need to say how this experimental phase willbemanaged,”hesaid.
As of press time, the Colombian government had not responded publicly to the statement from Lloreda and Espinosa. ™
ARGENTINA
Excelerate plans small-scale LNG export complex in Argentina
US-BASED Excelerate is moving forward with plans to establish a small-scale LNG export complex in Argentina, a company representa- tive said last week.
According to Gabriela Aguilar, Excelerate’s vice-president for South America and country manager for Argentina, the company is con- ducting a technical evaluation of the project, which would involve the construction of a gas liquefaction plant and LNG export terminal in Bahia Blanca. Discussions are under way with potential suppliers of gas for the plant and with potential buyers of Argentinian LNG, she told the Telam news agency.
Excelerate is currently reviewing its options for financing the project, which is likely to carry a price tag of $1.6bn, Aguilar said. She also stated that the company was holding these talks and carrying out the study with the aim of making an assessment of the project’s feasibility by mid- 2020. If the company then makes a final invest- ment decision (FID) in late 2020, it should be able to launch LNG exports by 2022 or 2023, she said.
If built, she said, Excelerate will use at least one of the modular units to build the gas
liquefaction facility in Bahia Blanca. The first unit will be able to handle 4mn cubic metres per day of gas, she stated, and Excelerate may add three more at a later date in order to raise the plant’s throughput to 16 mcm per day. (These figures indicate that the facility’s initial produc- tion capacity would be about 1.08mn tonnes per year of LNG, rising later to as much as 4.32mn tpy.)
Aguilar stressed that Excelerate did not see its small-scale project as a threat to YPF’s plans for setting up its own LNG export complex. The national oil company (NOC) intends to build a much larger plant for a cost of about $5bn and hopes to bring it on stream within four to five years, she said. By then, she remarked, Argen- tina’s Vaca Muerta shale formation will be pro- ducing enough gas to support both the large YPF facility and Excelerate’s modular facility in Bahia Blanca.
“If we take into account the potential devel- opment of Vaca Muerta, we can see that no sin- gle project will be exclusive,” she said. “Rather, they will be able to co-exist ... because as long as there is large-scale development, all options will be on the table in order to achieve the maximum
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SPEC LNG has a 20-year charter for the Hoegh Grace FSRU (Image: Excelerate Energy)
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