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Argentina gradually organizing natural gas production and consumption priorities

Friday, March 16th 2018 - 10:24 UTC
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“It's probable that we will continue importing regassified LNG from Chile in the winter” to meet peak demand, Aranguren said “It's probable that we will continue importing regassified LNG from Chile in the winter” to meet peak demand, Aranguren said

Argentina plans to increase natural gas exports to Chile, helping to encourage production growth in the giant Vaca Muerta shale play, while importing supplies from that country to meet peak demand, Energy Minister Juan Jose Aranguren said on Thursday.

“It's probable that we will continue importing regassified LNG from Chile in the winter” to meet peak demand, Aranguren said on the sidelines of The Economist's Argentina Summit in Buenos Aires. At the same time, he expects Argentina will continue exporting gas during the December to February summer, when it runs a surplus due to low demand.

“There is going to be increasingly more energy integration” between the neighboring countries, he said.

Argentina's government allowed gas exports for the first time to Chile last year through swap deals after more than a decade of virtually no deliveries. Argentina had been the main gas supplier to Chile in the late 1990s to 2005-06, shipping around 20 million cu m/d. But Argentina halted the deliveries as its production tumbled from a peak of 143 million cu m/d in 2004, causing shortages and a surge in imports.

Argentina's gas production has since recovered to 122 million cu m/d from a 16-year low of 113.7 million cu m/d, led by the development of Vaca Muerta and other unconventional plays, according to Energy Ministry data. When accounting for supplies that don't reach the gas grid, total available production is 110 million cu m/d, Aranguren said.

The output is still shy of the 140 million cu m/d of average consumption, with peaks of 180-185 million cu m/d in the winter. It makes up the deficit by importing around 30 million cu m/d, mostly from Bolivia and off the LNG market, with an additional 5 million cu m/d or so coming from Chile in the winter.

“Our goal is to produce 140 million cu m/d and import 10 or 15 million cu m/d instead of 30 million cu m/d,” Aranguren said.

This will help producers to continue to build production, as they will need a market for the output during the summer, when domestic demand sags. “They have to sell the output somewhere, and Chile is a destination for our production,” he said.

Categories: Energy & Oil, Argentina.

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  • Enrique Massot

    Clarin and the Macri government in disarray.

    Argentina's Supreme Court quashes the Tribunal Oral Federal No. 9, concocted by the government to process Cristina Kirchner and other members of her government.

    Why?

    The tribunal had been created by a decree of president Macri by transferring friendly City of Buenos Aires judges to the federal realm--only, forgetting to ask for permission from the top judges for the move.

    Also, two years later, the Justice Department finally delivered information on another lie disseminated by Clarin on a front-page 'investigative journalism story' revealing that “Máximo Carlos Kirchner would have an account in the Felton Bank of Delaware.”

    False, as certified by the U.S. Department of Justice.

    A few weeks ago, former CFK vice-president Amado Boudou was freed from prison, after being arrested in the midst of a press operation in his house, in pijamas and shoeless.

    Boudou spent two months in jail and was freed because the judges could not come up with valid reasons to keep him in prison during that time.

    Former minister Julio De Vido, also with numerous processes and illegally detained while the judge gathers evidence against him, was declared non-guilty on one set of charges, and kept in jail while another process is resolved. Evidence presented against De Vido was a succession of newspaper clippings incriminating the former minister.

    As if all of this weren't enough, forensic analysis of Alberto Nisman's computer revealed his death happened in the early hours of Sunday, Jan. 18, 2015. Nisman operated his computer at 7 a.m. This dismisses speculation that the former prosecutor had been killed earlier that day.

    You can't cheat everybody, all the time.

    Mar 18th, 2018 - 10:12 pm -1
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