Argentina offers to supply natural gas from Vaca Muerta to Brazil

Argentina offered to supply Brazil with natural gas from Vaca Muerta, the world’s second-largest unconventional gas reserve and the fourth-largest oil reserve of its kind.

The governor of Neuquén province, Omar Gutiérrez, yesterday expressed his willingness to negotiate with Brazil for the supply of gas from Vaca Muerta in his speech at Rio Oil & Gas, the largest hydrocarbon sector fair in Latin America, which is taking place this week in Rio de Janeiro.

According to Gutiérrez, at least five possible integration projects require the construction of gas pipelines and for which there are different sources of financing and investors, including public and private.”

The governor confirmed that Vaca Muerta, a vast unconventional hydrocarbon formation in Neuquén province in Argentina’s Patagonia, has enough gas to ensure Argentina’s self-sufficiency and meet some of the needs of countries such as Chile and Brazil.

Gutiérrez recalled that Argentina already exports gas from the Vaca Muerta to Chile and that thanks to the construction of the Néstor Kirchner gas pipeline, whose works are underway, it will be possible to bring the gas to Brazil and Bolivia.

The governor assured that it is possible to bring gas from Santa Fe to São Paulo, the largest city in South America and the most important industrial center of the continent, through a pipeline that passes through Bolivia and uses the already existing Bolivia-Brazil channel

There is also the possibility of bringing gas from Vaca Muerta to Porto Alegre in southern Brazil through a connection with the pipeline that runs through Uruguayana on the border between the two countries by building a pipeline directly between Santa Fe and São Paulo.

“We must stop using the conjunction ‘o’ and replace it with ‘y’. All fronts are possible; investors are looking for different connection options,” he said.

Gutiérrez expressed his conviction that the gas from Vaca Muerta can supply the market to longer provided by Bolivia, whose exports to Brazil have declined.

Currently, production at Vaca Muerta is 280,000 barrels of oil per day and 92 million cubic meters of gas; still, thanks to investments planned for the coming years, both figures should increase significantly.