On Might 8, 2023, Cristóbal López met in Caracas with Delcy Rodríguez, the vice chairman of Venezuela, to inform her about his intentions to spend money on oil areas in that nation. His associate Ignacio González Pedroso, within the firm Clear Petroleum, was current at that assembly. Formally, Pedroso’s companions are López’s sons, Emiliano and Nazareno, however in terms of necessary conferences, such because the one held in Venezuela, it’s Cristóbal himself who attends these conferences.
Now, López and Pedroso have begun to research the mature areas that YPF has put up on the market. This asset divestment plan is understood within the oil sector because the Andes Challenge and entails oil wells situated in 5 provinces: Mendoza, Neuquén, Río Negro, Chubut and Tierra del Fuego.
Clear Petroleum is an oil providers firm with in depth expertise in Chubut, which has the principle oil firms as purchasers, and now López and his associate Pedroso need to go to the opposite facet of the counter to be those who extract the oil. A related level of this new path that López is following is that this firm is a private funding exterior of the Indalo Group. That is necessary as a result of on the similar time, Cristóbal additionally participates within the bidding via Pilgrim Power, which is a part of Indalo, the place its predominant associate is Fabián De Sousa.
At YPF they don’t seem to be positive whether or not Cristóbal López is operating this race with two horses or whether or not he’s competing towards his associate De Sousa. One new growth on this regard is that till November of final yr Pedroso was additionally president of Pilgrim Power, however he resigned. It might not be the primary time that De Sousa has fought with Cristóbal’s companions in different companies.
The talks are nonetheless ongoing, particularly if one appears to be like at Neuquén, the place YPF plans to promote 7 oil areas. In that province, some of the necessary gamers is Claudio Urcera, a neighborhood businessman specializing in oil providers and with shut ties to the oil staff’ union that was beforehand led by the late union chief Guillermo Pereyra and which has been headed for a couple of years by Marcelo Rucci. Urcera had a meteoric rise in his lifestyle. His father Ernesto “Catito” Urcera was mayor of San Antonio, Río Negro. He was not fortunate in enterprise in his city, so he determined to to migrate to Neuquén the place issues went a lot better for him. In the present day his son, Manuel Urcera –grandson of “Catito”– is a well known Turismo Carretera racer and is at present married to mannequin Nicole Neumann.
Claudio Urcera is a good friend of Marcelo Figoli, the proprietor of Fenix Leisure Group and Alpha Media, who purchased Canal 7 in Neuquén in early 2023 with the intention of setting foot in Vaca Muerta. Urcera and Figoli had conversations with Cristóbal López to research the potential for forming a consortium to purchase some mature areas of YPF in Neuquén. Getting into the oil enterprise in Neuquén with Urcera would make the operation a lot simpler for López as a result of Nicole Neumann’s father-in-law is a vital participant within the area with a whole lot of dialogue with the governors Rolando Figueroa of Neuquén and Alberto Weretilneck of Río Negro. He has entry to the union and, extra importantly, he’s the principle promoter of the “purchase Neuquén” legislation that forces oil firms to rent native SMEs in the event that they need to spend money on Vaca Muerta. Even any new oil providers firm trying to land in Neuquén is aware of that for the whole lot to circulate, it has to speak to Urcera, a type of boss of Vaca Muerta.
The provinces wherein López is most are Chubut, as a result of his firm has operations in that space, and Río Negro and Neuquén due to the potential of Vaca Muerta. In Chubut, YPF has 5 areas on the market and in Río Negro 2, along with the 7 in Neuquén already talked about. To this are added 14 areas in Mendoza and a couple of in Tierra del Fuego. In Santa Cruz there are additionally mature areas that could possibly be put up on the market, but it surely seems that there Governor Claudio Vidal has different plans. He prefers that YPF return them to the province and that they resolve what to do. It seems that Vidal has Fomicruz SE, the state mining firm that intends to handle the mature areas. The dialogue revolves across the necessities of the contract as a result of YPF, on the finish of the exploitation interval, must do environmental remediation work that could possibly be very expensive.
An analogous dialogue is happening in all of the provinces. YPF’s concessions for mature areas are about to run out, however they nonetheless produce oil, so the brand new businessman, similtaneously shopping for the operation, ought to assure with the governor that he’ll be capable to prolong the contract as a result of the pure assets belong to the provinces. All of the actors assume that by preserving the sources of labor, guaranteeing the cost of taxes and producing royalties, there might be no main inconveniences in altering the oil operator.
YPF President Horacio Marín employed Banco Santander to hold out the operation. On behalf of the financial institution, the individuals in control of the method are Eugenia Fernández Pouchan, Roberto Castellino, Juan Gil Zuluaga and Augusto Ramos.
YPF’s mature areas, in oil jargon, are known as clusters and in that universe the cluster that produces essentially the most barrels per day is the one known as Mendoza Norte, which has a manufacturing of 11,725 barrels per day, in response to data offered by YPF in February of this yr. The cluster with the fewest barrels per day is in Chubut and contains three fields: El Tordillo, La Tapera and Puesto Quiroga. Right here the manufacturing is 416 barrels per day.
By way of gasoline, the most efficient cluster is in Tierra del Fuego, referred to as Magallanes. There, gasoline manufacturing is 1,131 km3 per day. The weakest is the Llancanelo cluster in Mendoza, with 2 km3 per day.
The sale of YPF’s mature areas opened the chance for individuals inquisitive about making the leap and changing into oil entrepreneurs to take action. Additionally on this race is Pecom, the historic firm of the Pérez Companc Group that previously had oil areas and in 2002 offered its belongings to Petrobras. This chance may additionally develop into the return of Pecom as an actor within the oil business. However, a former official of Mauricio Macri’s authorities may additionally be part of. That is Javier Iguacel, who on June 26 – lower than a month in the past – created the corporate Bentia Power with which he additionally intends to amass oil wells. Iguacel added as companions Lucas Logaldo, his former No. 2 within the Power Secretariat, and Lisandro Garmendia, president of a logistics firm for the oil business.
With the explosion of Vaca Muerta and within the Authorities of Javier Milei, Cristóbal López, Marcelo Figoli, Claudio Urcera or Javier Iguacel may be part of the ecosystem of Argentine oil producers.
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