The Chief of Staff, Nicolás Posse, and the Minister of Economy, Luis Caputo, chaired a meeting yesterday in the Scientists' Hall of Casa Rosada with the president of YPF SA, Horacio Marín; the company's executive vice president of Gas & Energy, Santiago Martínez Tanoira, and senior managers of the Petronas company. At the meeting, the executives of the Malaysian company showed their interest in making an investment of 180 million dollars for the engineering of the Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) project, key to the country's energy future and which would double the current production of Argentina.

The project seeks to take advantage of the full potential of Vaca Muerta and generate a positive impact on the Argentine economy, through the creation of thousands of jobs and the development of export products. This type of investment in infrastructure in the medium and long term will be possible thanks to the legal certainty that the draft Bases and Starting Points for the Freedom of Argentines law project that is being debated in Congress seeks to promote. This is a true change of direction for the country towards the recovery of the necessary trust and credibility.

The plan implies that after a year of engineering work, the corresponding tenders will be made for the project, which will be carried out in different phases. The first of them foresees the arrival of a ship, already built, that would allow exports to begin in the order of 6 mm3/d from 2027, while progress is made with the following phases.

By 2031, the global project would involve investments of around US$20 billion for LNG,US$20 billion for new wells in Vaca Muerta and US$10 billion in infrastructure. Once completed, it would generate some US$16 billion in annual revenue in gas exports.

Representing Petronas, in the meeting at Casa Rosada participated the director of operations (COO) and executive vice president of the company's gas area, Adnan Zainal Abidin; the Senior Vice President of LNG Assets Abang Yusuf Abang Puteh; the Vice President of International Upstream Assets Mark Fitzgerald; and the CEO of the company in Argentina, Nazri Idzlan Malek.

Petronas is one of the most important companies in the world in the hydrocarbon sector, with vast experience in upstream and also in the LNG market. The combination of efforts of YPF and Petronas seeks to generate more efficient operations that allow optimizing investments and capturing better market opportunities.