Page 15 - LatAmOil Week 08 2023

LatAmOil ARGENTINA LatAmOil

Lack of infrastructure has slowed development of the Vaca Muerta shale basin’s gas fields (Photo: Equinor)
It aims to foster the construction of pipelines Meanwhile, the US-based company Exceler-
linking the basin to the country’s population ate Energy has teamed up with Transportadora
centres and coastal ports, as well as gas liquefac- de Gas del Sur (TGS) to build its own LNG plant,
tion plants and terminals. and this facility could come online as soon as
There are several proposed initiatives that 2025.
hinge on the passage of the law. Argentina’s Vaca Muerta is one of the largest shale for-
national oil company (NOC) YPF has said mations in the world. It is around the size of Bel-
it intends to establish a joint venture with its gium and contains about 308 trillion cubic feet
Malaysian counterpart Petronas for the con- (8.722 trillion cubic metres) of shale gas, accord-
struction of a pipeline and LNG plant for Vaca ing to estimates from the US Energy Informa-
Muerta gas at a cost of $10bn. tion Administration (EIA). ™

GLOBAL
OPEC+ to keep current deal until year-end

OPEC+ will stick with the deal agreed in Octo- forecast following China’s relaxation of COVID-
ber until the end of the year, according to the 19 restrictions.
group’s de-facto head, Saudi Arabian Energy Prince Abdulaziz said: “No matter what
Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman Al-Saud. trends you are looking at, if you follow the
In an interview with Energy Aspects, he cautious approach, not only would you see the
said that he remained cautious about Chinese beginning of a positive trend to emerge but you
demand forecasts and the producer group need to make sure that these positive signals of
would not raise output based solely on initial this market can be sustained.”
signals. He added: “The Chinese economy’s unlock-
“The agreement that we struck in October is ing and because of that you will have demand
here to stay for the rest of the year, period,” he and what have you, but we all went through
said. cycles of openings and lockdowns and therefore
The October deal saw OPEC reduce its allo- what assurances (would we have) and the world
cated production level from 26.7mn barrels per have that none of what we went through, all of
day by a ‘voluntary adjustment’ of 1.27mn bpd us, every country, will not be repeated?”
to 25.4mn bpd, while its non-OPEC partners Meanwhile, he said that the US’ decision to
cut production by just over 700,000 bpd. Saudi release oil from its strategic petroleum reserves
Arabia and Russia each made a voluntary cut of (SPR) last year was the fault of the Paris-based
526,000 bpd, though in reality, Russian produc- International Energy Agency (IEA), which fore-
tion had already been hampered by a shrinking cast that Russian oil production would drop by
market for its crude following Western restric- 3mn bpd.
tions on purchases. “The IEA was responsible for it because of
While Russia announced last week that it the screaming and scaring that they had done
would reduce oil production by 500,000 bpd, on how much Russia will lose in terms of its pro-
OPEC this week increased its global demand duction,” he said. ™

Week 08 22•February•2023 www. NEWSBASE .com P15