Fracking en el sur de Mendoza: riesgos, incertidumbres y resistencias en contexto de una mega-sequía

En el año 2017, coincidiendo con la formación geológica Vaca Muerta –ubicada en las provincias argentinas de Mendoza, Neuquén, Río Negro y La Pampa–, comenzó a utilizarse en la provincia de Mendoza la técnica de fracking para la explotación de hidrocarburos no convencionales. En Mendoza, las resistencias a la megaminería basadas en la defensa del agua, un bien escaso y muy preciado, han sido de las más exitosas y trascendentes a nivel nacional. Sin embargo, el fracking tuvo una rápida autorización acompañada por la flexibilización de la legislación ambiental y un duro cuestionamiento a las voces críticas por parte del gobierno provincial. Ante este panorama, en el presente trabajo analizaremos cómo, a diferencia de lo acontecido en torno a la minería a gran escala, en el caso del fracking la protección del agua fue descuidada y la oposición social criminalizada. Por su parte, movimientos socioambientales y otros actores sociales, especialmente del sector científico-académico, han colocado en el debate público la situación de “mega-sequía” que atraviesa la provincia, la escasa evaluación de los riesgos y la incertidumbre generada por estas falencias. Una incertidumbre que se incrementa por el inicio de nuevas actividades extractivas que generan controversias y contradicciones con las políticas de cambio climático y con los objetivos de avanzar hacia una transición energética.

Valuación de un contrato de concesión petrolera: análisis del riesgo, simulación y opciones reales con volatilidad cambiante

El objetivo del trabajo consiste en exponer diferentes maneras de valuar un contrato de concesión con opciones de renovación y abandono secuenciales para el yacimiento Vaca Muerta en Argentina. En tal sentido, se utiliza la valuación por múltiplos, descuento de flujos de fondos y opciones reales con volatilidad cambiante. El análisis se complementa con el uso de planillas de cálculo para estudiar el riesgo del proyecto: sensibilidad, escenarios y simulación. Esta última permite calcular descripciones estadísticas, probabilidades estandarizadas, ratios de ganancias-pérdidas y volatilidad, estimada mediante el enfoque MAD (marketed asset disclaimer). Los resultados obtenidos exponen el alcance y las limitaciones de los modelos empleados. Se concluye a favor del uso de modelos de opciones con volatilidad cambiante, porque permiten la valuación de la flexibilidad estratégica, sensibilizando las principales variables y analizando el impacto, en el valor y condiciones contractuales.

Argentine government pins hopes on mining and energy

Significance The rebound related to higher world prices, growing global and domestic demand, more efficient operations at the Vaca Muerta shale oil field and new natural gas subsidies. These industries still have considerable development potential, which the government hopes to foster given their role as a source of regional employment and export dollars. Impacts High global prices and post-pandemic rebound will boost production and exports, notably of lithium, copper and unconventional hydrocarbons. Natural resources will attract new green energy projects, especially in connection with photovoltaic and wind energy. Environmental protests over extractive projects will persist.

Vaca Muerta: An Emerging Shale Petroleum Reservoir

Argentina is ranked second globally in terms of technically recoverable shale gas, and fourth in shale oil (EIA 2015). The most prolific shale is the Vaca Muerta formation. The objective of this paper is to present geological and reservoir characterization, drilling and production strategies, as well as historical performance and economics of Vaca Muerta. The word petroleum as used in this paper includes oil, natural gas, and natural gas liquids. This paper describes natural fractures and their impact on hydrocarbon productivity. The successful commercial production from this unconventional resource has been driven by many factors, including regional geology, availability of advanced technology such as horizontal drilling and multi-stage hydraulic fracturing, as well as domestic and regional hydrocarbon demand (Sierra 2016). Vaca Muerta itself is very unique with multiple hydrocarbon windows from east to west, ranging from dry gas to wet gas, to light oil and black oil. The productivity of Vaca Muerta is benchmarked to some of the best US shale plays such as the Eagle Ford and the Marcellus. Vaca Muerta contains 1202 Tcf of risked gas in-place and 270 billion barrels of risked oil in-place. It is estimated that 308 Tcf and 16 billion barrels of these resources are technically recoverable (EIA 2015). To date, the total number of horizontal wells exceeds 600, mostly drilled in the black oil window (Secretaria de Energia de Argentina 2020; Wood Mackenzie 2020b). Dubbed the ‘golden goose’ of Argentina, the last decade has seen rapid exploration and development activities. The Argentina state oil company (YPF) leads the development in this region together with its partners. In 2019, production from Vaca Muerta reached 90,000 bbl/d of oil and 1180 MMcf/d of gas, contributing 21% of Argentina's total production (Secretaria de Energia de Argentina 2020; Wood Mackenzie 2020b). YPF predicted these rates would increase by 150% in 2022 (Rassenfoss 2018). Part of this increase will be contributed by La Amarga Chica block, where YPF and its partner, PETRONAS approved their 30-year master development plan in late 2018 to deliver 54,000 boe/d by 2022 (Zborowski 2019). This production increase has obviously been delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The novelty of this paper is integration of geological and reservoir characterization, drilling and production strategies, as well as historical performance and economics of Vaca Muerta. It is concluded that oil and gas potential in the Vaca Muerta shale is significant and rivals the potential of some of the shales widely developed in the Unites States and Canada.

Nudo territorial y desterritorialización indígena en Loma Campana (Neuquén, Argentina) desde 1963.

El escrito analiza cómo las políticas estatales provinciales configuraron nudos territoriales en la zona donde se ubica la comunidad Campo Maripe, al norte de Añelo, el corazón de la formación geológica Vaca Muerta. Se sostiene que estas políticas diseñaron los espacios impulsando territorialidades asociadas a determinadas actividades económicas y trajeron como consecuencia la desterritorialización indígena. La comunidad Campo Maripe, cuyo territorio actualmente se superpone parcialmente con el yacimiento hidrocarburífero Loma Campana -uno de los tres más relevantes en la extracción por métodos no convencionales-, ha sido seleccionada como caso de estudio en función de la notoriedad de sus estrategias de resistencia durante los últimos años. Se utilizan fuentes escritas y orales para caracterizar el complejo panorama de la superposición de territorialidades a partir de las políticas provinciales y el desarrollo de dinámicas específicas en las interacciones de los diferentes actores dentro de los nudos territoriales. The paper analyses how Neuquen’s state policies configured territorial knots in the area where the mapuce community Campo Maripe is located, in northern Añelo, the core of the Vaca Muerta geological formation. It is argued that these policies designed spaces boosting certain economic activities and their associated territorialities and brought indigenous deterritorialization as a consequence. The Mapuce community Campo Maripe, whose territory currently partially overlaps with the Loma Campana oil field -one of the three most important fields in the extraction of hydrocarbons by non-conventional methods-, has been selected as a case study due to how notorious its resistance strategies have become over the last few years. Written documents and oral testimonies are used to characterize the complex scenario of territorial overlapping caused by state policies and the development of specific interactions between the different actors within the territorial knots.

Closing the Gap in Characterizing the Parent Child Effect for Unconventional Reservoirs - A Case of Study in Vaca Muerta Shale Formation

In Shale and Tight, the term "Parent-Child effect" refers to the impact the depleted area and corresponding stress changes originated by the production of a previously drilled well, the "parent", has over the generated hydraulic fracture geometry, conforming initial drainage area and consequent production performance of a new neighbor well, called "child". Such effect might be considered analogous to the no flow boundary created when the drainage areas of two wells meet at a certain distance from them in conventional reservoirs; but, unconventional developments exhibit higher exposure to a more impactful version of this phenomena, given their characteristic tighter well spacing and the effect pressure depletion of the nearby area by the neighbor well has over the child well's hydraulic fracture development. Due to the importance the Parent-Child effect has for unconventional developments, this study aims first to generally characterize this effect and then quantify its expected specific project impact based on real field data from the Vaca Muerta formation. To do so, we developed a methodology where fracture and reservoir simulation were applied for calibrating a base model using field observed data such as microseismic, tracers, daily production data and well head pressure measurements. The calibrated model was then coupled with a geomechanical reservoir simulator and used to predict pressure and stress tensor profiles across different depletion times. On these different resulting scenarios, child wells were hydraulically fractured with varying well spacing and completion designs. Finally, the Expected Ultimate Recovery (EUR) impact versus well spacing and the parent´s production time were built for different child´s completion design alternatives, analyzed and contrasted against previously field observed data. Results obtained from the characterization work suggests the parent child effect is generated by a combination of initial drainage area changes and stress magnitude and direction changes, which are both dependent of the pressure depletion from the parent well. Furthermore, the results show how the well spacing and parent's production timing, as well as parent's and child's completion design, significantly affect the magnitude of the expected parent child effect impact over the child's EUR.

Vaca Muerta's Productivity and Economic Performance. 7 Years in Review

Vaca Muerta is an unconventional reservoir located in Argentina. Since 2014, 397 horizontal wells have been drilled in this formation. The scope of this paper is to summarize the evolution of the productivity and the economics of these wells from 2014 until 2020. The methodology consisted in analyzing the results of the wells grouped by drilling campaign extracting the main parameters such as peak oil rate, cumulative oil at 365 days, number of fracture stages and length of the drain. After the extraction of these parameters we calculated each well's EUR using a modified hyperbolic function. A statistical analysis of the results was performed in order to calculate a "Type Well" for each drilling campaign. An economic evaluation for each campaign was then generated in order determine the "Type Well" economics. Once this was achieved we calculated the production profile of an "Economic Type Well" for each campaign defining this as the well which would generate an NPV=0$ at a discount rate of 10%. This was used to determine how many wells were economical for each year. The results of this study show the big impact on the productivity generated by the increase in well length and the number of frac stages revealing the progression of the "Learning curve" for the Vaca Muerta basin including the reduction in Capital Expenditures per well. At present, Vaca Muerta represents an opportunity as a profitable play due to the high productivity of the reservoir and low risk. Nevertheless, there is still room for improvement in the wells' cost according to the results of this study. This paper presents the evolution of the economics and the risk performance of Vaca Muerta.