Unanimous demand from the energy sector to invest more: orderly economy and access to foreign currency

Entrepreneurs, officials and specialists met this Thursday at Malba to analyze for more than three hours the opportunities and challenges of the energy sector. That was the axis of Democracy and the development cycle summoned by Clarione, where they agreed on the need for an adequate regulatory framework and greater stability in the face of fiscal and exchange rate imbalances. there was also shared requests for exchange access.

“The investment for us it is the basis on which to look to the future. We must have a coherent and logical development scheme, a state policy that allows companies to imagine development over time “, said the CEO of the Pan American Energy Group, Marcos Bulgheroni, at the first table of the event, about “The role and challenges of integrated companies”.

In front of more than 200 people in the Malba auditorium, Bulgheroni highlighted his company’s average investment of $ 1,150 million over the past three years, but said that “access to foreign exchange is the biggest limit”.

In turn, the president of the YPF, Pablo González, was “very optimistic” with the alliance of the semi-state oil company with the Malaysian Petronas to build a plant liquefaction with an initial investment of US $ 10,000 million. “What we will announce in the afternoon is the possibility of transforming Argentina into a player in the global gas market, as a net exporter,” she said.

In the second table on “Strategies to Strengthen the Energy Sector”, Nicolás Arceo, Director of Economics and Energy Advisory and former Vice President of Administration and Finance at YPF, stated that “the production of oil and natural gas has grown, “he explained, but “the shadow of the sector is the fiscal problem and a considerable problem with energy subsidies”which this year was over US $ 15,000 million.

Daniel Gerold, director of G&G Consultants, said that “Argentina has everything, it lacks the rules for what it does not have: capital” for what to attract it you need “access to foreign exchange, fiscal stability and compliance with contracts”. Mauricio Roitman, energy consultant and former president of Enargas, instead assured that “the government takes note of taking care of the fiscal balance because this ends up in an economy that does not have financing and inflation”.

In the third panel on “The role of the different actors in the Argentine energy matrix”, Ricardo Markous, CEO of Tecpetrol, said that “it would be ideal to go for a regularization to be able to access foreign currency and increase production”, while Ricardo Rodríguez, president of Shell, said that “there are access and exchange problems, and a stable regulatory framework is needed”.

Claudio Cunha, CEO of Enel Argentina, assured that Edesur has invested 480 million dollars in the last three years, but that there is an “unstable picture”. “It cannot be that the rate depends on a person who decides whether it will be 10, 20 or 50,” he added. And Bernardo Andrews, CEO of Genneia, said that renewable energy producers “have the will to build, grow and cannot find infrastructure to evacuate energy.”

Javier Rielo, director of the Southern Cone of Total Energies, instead assured that “clear and stable rules, compliance with contracts are our letter of introduction, so the investments arrive”.

In the fourth and final table on “Public Policies for Energy Development”, the Undersecretary of Energy, Flavia Royón, highlighted the country’s potential, while warning that “the windows of opportunity are closing, so we must be very assertive”, while the former secretary of energy, Gustavo Lopetegui, said that “the best energy policy is to have macroeconomic stability”.

The governor of Neuquén, Omar Gutiérrez, said that “if Argentina has economic stability, investments will fly, but we don’t have macroeconomic stability”, so he asked to “keep moving forward”, and his Chubut counterpart, Mariano Arcioni, stressed that “Argentina’s resources will become wealth when we have the consensus”.

Participants in the event also include Ricardo López Murphy (JxC), Federico Salvai (JxC), Gabriel Martino, Carlos Brown (BICE), the Minister of Energy of Neuquén, Alejandro Monteiro, Jaime Campos (AEA), Daniel Arroyo (FdT ), Hernán Letcher and Facundo Prado, Diego Bossio (Equilibra), Rodolfo D’Onofrio, Emilio Basavilbaso, Juan Moreno (PAE), Pablo Cervi (JxC), Martin Genesio (AES), Martín Kaindl (IAPG), Sebastián Delgui (Fortescue ), Gastón Manes, Ricardo Gil Lavedra and Andrés Gil Domínguez.