They will present the Gas Plan 4 and 5 next week and anticipate a new bill

The Minister of Economy, Sergio Massa, announced the launch of the Plan Gas IV that contemplates the extension of the calls made from 2020, and the call for Plan Gas Vboth necessary to supply the gas pipeline network under construction, and anticipated that the Government will send a bill to Congress that will create a new long-term regulatory framework for the hydrocarbon sector.

In the city of Houston, the oil heart of the United States, and before some 40 businessmen and experts from the sectorMassa anticipated that “On September 14, the extended Gas 4 plan and Gas 5 plan will be presented, which will allow the Néstor Kirchner gas pipeline to be filled”a measure that had already been discussed with the companies that currently operate in Vaca Muerta during a meeting held in the city of Neuquén weeks ago.

In December 2020, the national government launched the Gas.Ar Plan, an initiative that aims to contract gas production with a base of 70 million cubic meters per day to ensure the supply of priority demand, as well as to replace part of the imports of Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) and liquid fuels, with the consequent tax savings.

Now, with the start of construction of the first stage of the Néstor Kirchner Gas Pipeline that will connect Vaca Muerta with the town of Saliqueló in Buenos Aires -the second stage, which began its engineering bidding process this week-, the Government seeks to guarantee that the gas This work will be required to be available at the time the pipeline is enabled as of June 2023.

In Houston, Massa also launched a call for companies to participate in the treatment of a law in Congress, which will be sent to parliament in the first week of October, as a way of guaranteeing “the construction of State policies that allow them to plan in the long term”, and that would transcend future government changes.

“The energy security strategy was part of the agenda of the G20 president at the Los Angeles Summit, Argentina has assumed to be a central player in the global energy security agenda”Serge Massa

Massa highlighted the importance that the Alberto Fernández administration attaches to accelerating investments in the sector and announced the President’s soon visit to Houston, who will arrive in that city as part of his trip to the United Nations General Assembly on 20 next September in New York.

“The energy security strategy was part of the agenda of the G20 president at the Los Angeles Summit, Argentina has assumed to be a central player in the global energy security agenda,” Massa stressed.

The minister also referred “to what the energy sector represents and what are the changes that Argentina has to face so that each one of the economic actors feels like a protagonist, and can feel that this principle of stability and clear rules is going to comply”.

“We are talking about a sector in terms of representing the product horizon, it can represent a duplication of product in 7 years, similar to what the agribusiness sector presents today in the Gross Product of Argentina.”

Massa spoke of “certainty and long-term planning” so that an investment program can be defined that will triple the current export capacity. Likewise, he referred to the incentives that companies would obtain on the incremental participation that they achieve both in production and in exports.

“It is absurd that Argentina has buried 170 years” of gas production, he considered in reference to the estimated reserves of shale gas in the Vaca Muerta formation.

Event host Marc Jones, Baker Institute Fellow in Political Science and Jamail Chair in Los Angeles Studies at Rice Universitycompared Massa to James Baker, the legendary American diplomat who participated in the Roland Reagan and Bush administrations who played a key role in achieving a peaceful transition in the demise of the Soviet bloc.

In this way, Massa is seen as the one who “can build bridges” between the opposition and the government, and generate the long-term state policies that the sector demands to secure investments.

Massa He was accompanied by the Secretary of Energy Flavia Royon and the president of YPF, Pablo González, with whom he was on Thursday until early Friday morning outlining the planning of the presentations.

The president of Energía Argentina, Agustín Gerez, the advisor Gustavo Martínez Pandiani also participated, as well as the participation of the economist Miguel Peirano, who lives in the United States and is a member of the Chamber of Energy in Argentina.

The businessmen present valued the announcements and the intention that the “political transition be isolated from circumstantial issues independent of a particular government”, encouraged by the announcement of a new regulatory framework for the sector.

Also during the day, the minister, as part of the objective of his tour in search of promoting the level of investment of the companies that already operate in Vaca Muerta and of others that could reach training, held a meeting agenda with the directors of the major global oil companies such as ExxoMobil, Chevron, Shell, BP, and Total Energies.

Before companies and investors, the minister presented the Gas Plan and all its facets and incentives for production and subsequent export, in order to transform the country from what it is today, dependent on and importer of energy, to an exporter and turn the balance payment and business.

Massa presented the scope of the recent decree 277, which has to do with incentives and benefits for firms that achieve incremental production.

In this sense, the requests of the companies that Massa has already heard in Washington and in Houston are access to foreign currency, and in this sense it is not ruled out that the minister grants additional incentives to those who are already in 277, to those who comply with certain parameters in future production and export, so “novelties in this regard” are expected, they advanced from the economic team.

Likewise, Massa will announce that he will once again “put into force a decree from 2014 by former president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner regarding the birth of Vaca Muerta, which the government of (Mauricio) Macri failed to comply with and generates some level of distrust in the Argentina by Chevron,” Massa told reporters on tour.

He thus made reference to the Hydrocarbons Promotion Regime of 2013, where Chevron was left halfway without being able to use it, after the measures taken by the macrista management.

In a similar tone, the head of the Treasury Palace held a working meeting in Houston with members of the Chamber of Special Oil Operations Companies (Ceope) headed by Tomas Hesse, and directors of global companies such as Schlumberger, Halliburton, Baker Hughes, Exterran , Weatherford, Superior Energy Services and Helmerich & Payne.

During the meeting, the importance of this group that complements the value chain with the aim of being able to increase the production that the country needs was analyzed, for which Massa presented the content of the so-called Vaca Muerta Green Channel, which will speed up the process import of equipment, machinery and infrastructure, for which the Customs will lead an articulated work that reduces bureaucratic procedures.

In this way, a work table was formed, for which Hess decided to convene the CEOs in Buenos Aires in order to continue advancing with the different sectors, which will begin to be defined as of next week.