Neuquén, February 6, 2018. Tecpetrol, an oil company of the Techint Group and member of ARPEL, opened a gas treatment plant located in the vicinity of Añelo, Neuquén, with Governor of the Province of Neuquén Omar Gutiérrez and Minister of Energy and Mines of Argentina Juan J. Aranguren. This plant will process the unconventional gas produced in the Fortín de Piedra deposit of the Vaca Muerta formation.

Also present at the opening ceremony were Senator Guillermo Pereyra, Secretary General of the Union of Private Oil and Gas Workers, and Manuel Arévalo, General Secretary of the Union of Oil and Gas Professional and Senior Staff. Representatives of Tecpetrol present were Carlos Ormachea, President and CEO of Tecpetrol, Horacio Marín, Director General of Tecpetrol Exploration and Production (E&P), and Pablo Iuliano, Technical Director of the Neuquén Basin.

With an investment of more than US$ 30 million, the plant has a processing capacity of 6.5 million cubic meters of gas per day (m3/d). The new facilities will allow increasing the production of gas from 1.5 million m3/d to 6.5 million m3/d. With this, the first phase of the Fortín de Piedra project will be completed. A total investment of US$ 2,300 million is planned up to 2019 for this project.

To date, Tecpetrol has invested approximately US$ 700 million in the Fortín de Piedra project, which has already created more than 3500 direct jobs. During the last quarter of 2017, the gas production was 1.5 million m3/d, and it is estimated that it will reach 5 m3/d by the end of February. At present, the activity is performed with six oil drilling units.

Techint Engineering and Construction in charge of Tecpetrol works

The construction of the gas treatment plant of Tecpetrol was carried out by Techint Engineering and Construction, which is also part of the Techint Group. It was completed in six months, a record time for works of these characteristics; it involved more than 280 thousand man-hours with peaks of 120 people working. The design, construction and assembly was fully modular, with around 60 modules provided locally by companies of the value chain of the Techint Group in Argentina.

At the same time, the company is moving forward with the construction of the Central Gas Plant of Tecpetrol, whose startup is estimated for June 2018. With a treatment capacity of more than 14 million m3/day of gas, the final investment for this plant will be around US$ 280 million. In addition, Techint Engineering and Construction is working in the water intake and gas pipelines for Tecpetrol production.