Page 10 - LatAmOil 06182019 corrected PDF

LatAmOil
NEWS IN BRIEF
LatAmOil
UPSTREAM
Neuquen governor hopes
for additional investment in
Vaca Muerta
Omar Gutierrez, the governor of Argentina’s Neuquen province, said last week that he hoped to see additional investment in the Vaca Muerta shale basin.
To date, he said, Buenos Aires has worked on a fairly small scale, granting investors con- tracts that only cover a third of the basin’s total acreage of 30,000 square km and bringing only 5.4% of this area into the full-scale development stage. Even so, he said, output from these elds has allowed Argentina “to gradually reduce gas imports and ... to start exporting oil and gas.”
MIDSTREAM
TC Energy, IEnova finish Sur de Texas gas pipeline
Canada’s TC Energy Corp and its Califor- nia-based partner IENova, a subsidiary of Sem- pra Energy, wrapped up work on the Mexican section of a new natural gas pipeline connecting Mexico and the United States last week.
e Sur de Texas link, built at a cost of US$2.5 billion, has a throughput capacity of 2.6 billion cubic feet per day. It will supply gas to residential and industrial users, as well as thermal power plants (TPPs).
e pipe is 770 km long, and most of the route lies o shore in the Gulf of Mexico. Sur de Texas is connected to the Valley Crossing pipe, which Canada’s Enbridge Inc. built to export gas from elds in Texas.
TC Energy and IEnova had originally intended to complete the pipeline in late 2018 but had to revise their work schedule, owing to delays and cost increases.
DOWNSTREAM
Gas gaining traction as a fuel for Colombian truck fleet
Orlando Cabrales Segovia, the president of the Colombian Association of Natural Gas (Natur- Gas), said at a conference last week that natural gas was becoming a more popular motor fuel in his country.
e Colombian eet of natural gas vehicles (NGVs) is set to expand this year, with the num- ber of gas-burning tractor-trailers rising from 14 to 109 by the end of 2019, he said. is will
reduce the country’s carbon dioxide emissions by 30% and will also eliminate nearly all of its particulate matter emissions, he stated. It will also reduce fuel costs for the operators of the NGV trucks by around 35%, he commented.
“ e pilots carried out in our geography and the experience of the last months have rati ed that the vehicles dedicated to natural gas, in addition to the environmental and economic benefits, present an adequate performance even in the Colombian mountainous zones,” he commented.
PRODUCTION
Wood Mackenzie: Seasonal factors, transport costs could give Argentina’s gas an edge in Asia
According to WoodMackenzie, Argentina has the potential to become a major supplier of nat- ural gas to Asia.
The consultancy said in a recent research report that the South American country is in a good position to take advantage of seasonal increases in demand for gas in Asia. It justi ed its argument by citing seasonal factors.Power plants and other consumers in Asia typically buy more
gas in the winter, when colder weather boosts gas consumption levels, and Argentina pro- duces more gas during the same months, when the Southern Hemisphere experiences summer, it explained.
Wood Mackenzie also pointed out that the cost of transporting gas by sea from Argentina to Asia was likely to be relatively low, since tankers leaving from that part of South America would not have to pass through the Panama Canal.
POLICY
Head of Mexico’s Central
Bank urges government to
shore up Pemex
Alejandro Diaz de Leon, the governor of Mex- ico’s Central Bank, has urged his country’s gov- ernment to bolster the national oil company’s creditworthiness.
Speaking at a presentation of the Central Bank’s latest nancial stability report last week, Diaz de Leon said that the company was too important to the national economy to ignore. He also described the Fitch ratings agency’s decision to downgrade Pemex’s bonds to “junk” status as worrisome, saying it was likely to have negative knock-on e ects on Mexico’s nancial system and public nances.
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Week 24 19•June•2019