In the absence of the total privatization that Javier Milei’s government envisaged for YPF (as foreseen by the official DNU, which then saw the list of companies that would have suffered that fate cut off), the new management at the helm of the company’s oil sector contemplate a plan designed to quadruple the value of the company over the next four years.
In an “unofficial” meeting with a group of journalists, company sources explained the fundamental guidelines that will be implemented by the management, currently in the hands of Horacio Marin, president of the state-controlled oil company.
The main objective behind the strategy is for Argentina to achieve it export more than 30,000 million dollars per yearthrough its energy production.
The focus won’t just be on accelerate production in the Vaca Muerta field, the second largest shale gas field in the world and the fourth largest shale oil field. Plus, it’s inside plans to divest or withdraw from some emblematic areas in the production of conventional resources, such as the areas of the provinces of Chubut and Santa Cruz.
“It is very difficult for the company to be profitable with a portfolio as large as YPF’s,” current officials of the oil company repeat like a mantra. As they explain, “Very mature” areas are less profitable, with which in the short and medium term the idea is to reduce participation in these areas. As well as focusing and adding technology to unconventional resources.
Faced with a decision that appears controversial to say the least in the eyes of the governors, the oil company assures that the process “will be very clean, with governors and union members”, they promise. And they cite as a “successful” case that of the Brazilian Petrobras, which began that same path in 2013.
At YPF they discount that disinvestment in historically oil-producing provinces “will not be complicated” because they interpret that there may be other companies interested in purchasing some of the production areas, for example, in Comodoro Rivadavia.
However, recently the governor of Chubut, Ignacio Torres, he vehemently questioned the oil company’s decision. “They want to leave the province as if nothing had happened,” he said, warning that if the plan to return conventional oil exploitation areas comes to fruition, his administration will require the company to “pay 100 years of environmental responsibility.”
“They very freely announce their plans to repay mature areas without taking into account the enormous environmental liabilities generated while they were making money in those same areas, profiting resources that belong to the province”, Torres said this in a statement.
Another of the objectives of the oil company’s new strategy is make LNG (liquefied gas) projects feasible in the medium and short term to give greater profitability and global competitiveness to that resource. “We are seeing an export of 120 million m3 per day,” says the oil company, Petronas’ strategic partner in the liquefied gas sector.
Also among the company’s new management plans”There is no plan to build a new refinery in the country. Yes, improve the technology,” the sources insist.
Source: Clarin
