Page 13 - LatAmOil Week 19 2021

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It also reported that it had spudded 3WD on and CEO of PetroTal, expressed satisfaction
May 3 and expected to finish drilling and com- with the production forecast for the field.
plete the well in about 41 days. Finishing this “It is very exciting as a management team to
well will enable PetroTal to dispose of another be bringing the new 7D well on for the company
50,000 bpd of water, enough to accommodate after almost a year lag from completion of the
anticipated production growth for the next 14 6H well,” he said. “The stabilised flow rates of
months, it said. approximately 4,550 bpd look very promising
The Bretaña oilfield lies within Block 95, and are in line with our technical estimates.
a licence area within Peru’s northern Loreto Continuing with our development plan, we
region. commenced drilling the 3WD well, [which] will
Manuel Pablo Zuniga-Pflucker, the president greatly increase our water disposal capacity.” ™

ARGENTINA
TGS blames government’s gas

price freeze for losses in Q1-2021

TRANSPORTADORA de Gas del Sur (TGS), mid-term elections scheduled for November of
Argentina’s largest transporter of natural gas, this year, the newspaper added.
has blamed the government for its poor finan- It also noted, though, that the government
cial performance in the first quarter of the year. was likely to let downstream gas prices climb in
Alejandro Basso, the CFO of TGS, said dur- the near future, as it has already done for elec-
ing an earnings call earlier this week that the tricity distributors.
company had sustained a loss of ARS2.24bn TGS controls a gas pipeline system that cov-
($23.83mn) in the first quarter of the year. The ers about 7,500 km, making it the largest of its
loss stems from Buenos Aires’ decision to freeze kind in Argentina. Its networks handle about
gas transport prices for the last two years, he 60% of the country’s gas. ™
said.
The government has justified the price freeze
by citing inflation rates, which currently top
40%, and the consequences of the coronavirus
(COVID-19) pandemic. By contrast, Basso said,
TGS believes that a rate hike is necessary and
has asked for permission to increase its prices
by 59%.He stated, though, that the company
did not expect officials in Buenos Aires to grant
this request – or authorise any price increases –
before April of next year.
In the meantime, he said, TGS’ revenues are
likely to fall further.
The company may also see its performance
deteriorate on other fronts, according to the
Buenos Aires Times. TGS has had to cut the
value of its assets since the introduction of the
price freeze and has seen the price of its New
York-listed stock drop by close to 80% since the
start of 2018, the newspaper explained.
But it also quoted Konstantinos Papalias,
an energy analyst at the Puente consultancy in
Buenos Aires, as saying that TGS’ earnings were
not likely to collapse. The company still derives
more revenue from sales of ethane, propane and
other natural gas liquids (NGLs) than it does
from pipeline gas transport, so it has a cushion,
Papalias explained.
Buenos Aires’ reluctance to let midstream
gas transport prices rise appears to be rooted in
concerns about alienating voters ahead of the TGS’ networks carry about 60% of (Image: TGS)

Week 19 13•May•2021 www. NEWSBASE .com P13