Global Courant
The project was to be totally private. Kirchnerism was not convinced until the dollars for imports left him in 2022. Friendly fire.
The idea of a gas pipeline that a Vaca Muerta with Buenos Aires was launched by the administration of Mauricio Macri. The current management resumed the project with another format. And he only stepped on the accelerator in 2022, concerned about the drain on dollars he had from energy imports.
In mid-2019, the Ministry of Energy called a private tender for a trunk gas pipeline, under the name “TGC” (Transporte de Gas del Centro), a way to complement the existing sections of TGS and TGN. The official in charge was Gustavo Lopetegui. It was going to unite Vaca Muerta with Buenos Aires.
“There was a public tender with four interested parties. But, after the primary elections, the dollar rose from $44 to $60 and the bidders requested a postponement in the opening of envelopes, because there were no certainties about the financial economic situation of the country. The process lasted until March 30, 2020”, recalls Juan José Aranguren, former Minister of Energy, who no longer participated in Macri’s management.
“(Former Secretary of Energy) Darío Martínez did nothing until December 30, 2020. It took 26 months to reactivate a work,” he criticized.
The current administration continued with the studies, but with another format. The Government thought of China as a potential financier of the gas pipeline. “It was proposed to do it with Treasury resources. We designed the first stage, in which we are going to allocate US$ 1,566 million between the Treasury and the tax on large fortunes (N. de R: it had a paragraph for gas exploitation for YPF, but the funds were redirected towards this work) ”, they explained in the officialism.
The state company is the one that commissioned the construction of the gas pipeline, at an approximate cost of US$ 2,700 million. But the project did not have an immediate green light from Kirchnerism.
In the fall of 2022, with skyrocketing energy prices, Argentina began to spend five times more dollars than in previous years (2020/2021). The situation was noticed by Federico Basualdo, then Undersecretary of Electric Power. That official struggled to advance with the gas pipeline. His arguments would have convinced other “hard” sectors of Kirchnerism, who did not want that work.
In Enarsa, Basualdo had already achieved the promotion of Gerez. The Santa Cruz official shouldered the task, but had to endure “friendly fire.” More than a year ago -at the beginning of June 2022-, the Minister of Productive Development -Matías Kulfas-. “It is IEASA (the name that Enarsa had) with officials designated by it, who make the tenders. Those who did not use the pen properly were their Ieasa officials. They put together a bidding document tailored to Techint and the sheet metal that the group manufactures in Brazil, 33 millimeters thick,” the minister sent to several journalists.
Cristina Fernández defended Enarsa. “Very unfair and, above all, very painful that this type of attack is carried out by officials of the Frente de Todos government itself. Worst of all: without showing face, in off, lying and using journalists. With mistakes and successes, I always spoke and acted head on. Painful ”, crossed the vice president on Twitter. President Alberto Fernández asked Kulfas to resign.
A few days before that incident, another government official – Antonio Pronsato, a former collaborator of Julio De Vido (Minister of Planning between 2003 and 2015) – broke ties with Ieasa (the current Enarsa). Gerez was able to continue with all the tenders on time, and meeting the deadlines committed to the Government, but several times when there seemed to be problems -such as with valves or technical details-, in Enarsa they saw the hand of Pronsato.
