Matteo Dondeo, Managing Director, Pipeline Business Solutions, Italy, explains how the midstream sector is transforming Argentina’s role in the global oil and gas market.
After more than a decade of limited development in exploration and pipeline construction activities, the situation has been changing in the last few years in Argentina thanks to Vaca Muerta, which is considered the second-largest shale gas field and the fourth-largest shale oilfield in the relevant world rankings.
Several Argentinian governments in the past have focused resources to this huge field (whose area is almost equivalent to the surface of Belgium) with the result of a massive bump in exploration and production – almost 2200 wells and construction projects for the whole upstream transport infrastructure – needed to enhance the maximum potential of the oilfield.
Here, hundreds of kilometres of flowlines, treatment and compressor plants and pipelines (among other infrastructure projects) have been completed (or are currently under construction) – together with the development of the first LNG terminal, Argentina is set to become the leading country in South America for the oil and gas sector. Development on this existing network aims to cover the increasing need of both the Argentinian population and its industries to export oil and natural gas on the global market.
Project framework
The first step to achieve these goals was the field expansion – implemented thanks to a massive drilling campaign that has led to an increase in the natural gas production managed by new flowlines and trunkline, treatment plants and other dedicated facilities. In this new era for Vaca Muerta, the most important player is Sacde (Sociedad Argentina de Construcción y Desarrollo), present in the entire value chain of the requested infrastructure, including the compressor station located in Tratayen, part of the new GPNK transportation system.
With that foundation, the following step was the construction of the President Nestor Kirchner Gas pipeline (known as GPNK, Gasoducto Presidente Nestor Kirchner in Spanish) – since the beginning, the aim was to have the line completed within the following winter, giving a time frame of less than one year to complete the most challenging project of this type over the last few decades in the country.
This pipeline stretches from the heart of Vaca Muerta Gas Field in the Neuquen province for 560 km towards the existing TGS Gas System, increasing its capacity by 22 million m3/d. It also includes two new compressor stations (one of them aforementioned) to boost natural gas in the new pipeline. The main companies to take on this responsibility were the JV Sacde – Techint and BTU for the pipeline, Sacde for Tratayen Compressor Stations and Contreras Hermanos for Salliquelo Compressor Stations.
The pipeline was the largest project of its kind in the last 40 years in Argentina and was developed in a record time span of 10 months by a 50/50 joint venture (JV) between Sacde and Techint, taking care of all the EPC (Engineering, Procurement and Construction) aspects of the project.
Sacde Head of Oil and Gas Business Unit, Carlos Coletto, explains the challenges faced and solutions put in place by the JV project team to complete the construction of the pipeline within the given schedule: “To achieve the completion of 440 km of 36 in. pipeline as a JV we decided to rely on the best available technologies on the market for all the construction phases of the line starting from automatic welding (to give the requested production of 100 joints per day on average), to AUT inspection to have the warranty of high quality welds, to the latest European technologies in terms of heavy equipment for pipelaying, bending, backfilling, etc… and cutting edge equipment for HDD crossing and special sections. Today the GPNK represents the most challenging and successful example of pipeline project in our region and we all so proud of the work done."
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