2023-06-07 03:01:00
With a Provincial Hotel from where the 300 km that separate the Mar del Plata coast from the CAN-100 block where the Argerich Project will be developed can be projected, the table on “Waterways, development and sovereignty” addressed core aspects of the productive potential of the offshore exploitation, as well as the importance of the expansion, strengthening and sovereign defense of the waterways linked to the Buenos Aires reality, with the construction of the Magdalena Canal as one of the great bets.
“We are talking about a volume similar to Vaca Muerta. It is a situation that changes the equation of Argentina. The sea is the future”, encouraged the director of Offshore Exploration of YPF, Néstor Bolatti, about the projections that the state oil company has about the scope of offshore hydrocarbon exploitation in the North Argentina Basin. “The forecast is about 200,000 barrels per day, which is what all of YPF generates today,” he quantified it, within the framework of the first day of the Buenos Aires Productive Congress that opened this Tuesday in Mar del Plata, organized by the ministries Production, Science and Technological Innovation and Agrarian Development.
While details are being defined for the start of the exploratory campaign together with the Norwegian state company Equinor, Bolatti expressed expectations about the results of the inaugural stage where seismic exploration will allow tracking where there could be hydrocarbons. “We have evidence but not certainties, and that is the key that we will try to find out soon,” the YPF director remarked. What are those signs? Fundamentally the discoveries of oil reserves off the coast of Namibia and South Africa made by Shell and Total, respectively, in 2022. “The discoveries in Africa are encouraging. These accumulations were formed about 120 million years ago, when the Namibian coast was 300 km from the Buenos Aires coast, ”he remarked about the distance that today extends to more than 7 thousand kilometers.
In turn, Bolatti highlighted the need to gradually create the conditions for the productive sector to accompany the offshore exploitation process, with the strengthening and preparation of regional suppliers. “This process can allow the development of local economies, but we must be vigilant because in other large projects we fail, we have not always managed to transform that cash flow into value,” he warned.
Towards the energy transition
For his part, the Undersecretary of Energy of the Province, Gastón Ghioni, focused on the need to link the economic fruits of offshore exploitation with the energy transition process towards renewable energies. “There is no contradiction between the energy transition and the exploitation of non-renewable resources, with the resources electric transport and the infrastructure of the new energies must be financed,” he outlined as a roadmap and taking into account the rejection of environmental organizations to the project , which even generated its delay before the judicialization of the conflict. The memory was worth a direct questioning of the official to the local mayor of the Pro, Guillermo Montenegro, who filed one of the complaints in the Federal Justice: “it was political pettiness, this is a State project and he wanted to boycott it,” he lashed out.
Meanwhile, Ghioni visualized a strengthening of the role of the Province in the Argentine hydrocarbon industry, where 70% of the fuels are refined with the YPF plants in La Plata, Axion in Campana, Shell in Dock Sud and Puma in Bahía Blanca, added to the petrochemical poles of Ensenada, Zárate, Bahía Blanca and Avellaneda. But in turn, he warned about the need to insert extractive activity in a strategic key: “we do not have to limit ourselves to fighting over royalties, this should not be something merely extractivist, where we do not leave the economy’s primarization scheme. What we want to discuss is what kind of country and Province we want to carry forward”.
The discussion about whether or not offshore exploration is convenient was intense. The international organization Greenpeace came to promote an appeal against oil exploration. In 2022, he said that “seismic exploration means the devious violation of the physical integrity and freedom of movement” of the southern right whale. Federal judge Santiago Martín said then that “the activity is likely to generate temporary and permanent hearing damage, displacement, behavioral changes (feeding, reproduction, rest, migration) among others (problems).”
The specialist Aldo Duzdevich informed this medium in May that “to avoid this type of accident, the ship has two trained observers on board, plus the radar, and if an animal approaches less than a thousand meters, the operation is stopped and proceeds to the maneuver known as ‘soft start’, which means gradually increasing the sound so that the animal detects it and, before suffering damage, moves away naturally”.
The channel that unites
The construction of the Magdalena Canal, the beaconing and dredging work that will allow the fluvial outlet to open water without passing through Montevideo, was considered another of the great projections for the productive development of Buenos Aires. “We have a need to unite the Argentine river and sea ports,” said Hernán Orduna, head of the Magdalena Canal Temporary Special Executive Unit.
With a tender projected for the end of July, Orduna explored the main positive aspects of establishing an alternative route to the Punta Indio Canal. “65% of the delays of the entire trunk waterway occur there, with serious obstacles to deepening and extending that channel,” he remarked. In contrast, the Magdalena Canal will be double-tracked, it can be navigated by larger vessels, at higher speeds, with a shorter distance and where it will also demand a lower maintenance cost. “This translates into direct income for the national and local economy,” he concluded.
The project
The tender was launched in April by President Alberto Fernández and Governor Axel Kicillof. In this way, the Nation and the Province decided to advance in the dredging and beaconing that will give the south of Buenos Aires the possibility of exporting its production without having to go through Montevideo, as Orduna said at the round table, which is today the last stop for river transport before to go out to sea.
When tendered and completed, the work will make it no longer mandatory for cargo ships to travel south through the Argentina channel and then turn towards the Punta Indio channel towards the Uruguayan capital.
Kicillof had stressed the importance of the project. Speaking before both chambers in March, he said that it will be “a work that will be deployed on the coast of our province and is strategic for the country and the province, and in general for sovereignty.” He added Kicillof that “it will allow us an outlet to the sea and guarantee the connection of the La Plata Basin with Antarctica without outside interference.” For the governor, the problem dates back to the May Revolution and if it was not resolved before “it is because there are private interests that prevent it.”
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