The Argentina GNL project will be implemented by Argentina’s YPF and Malaysia’s Petronas. In August 2024, the parties chose a municipality in the central Argentinian province of Río Negro as the site for the project. The final investment decision is expected to be made in 2025. In addition to three production trains with a total capacity of 30.2 million tons of LNG per year, the project will include the construction of three gas pipelines for transporting feedstock from the Vaca Muerta formation, which is currently being used solely for the domestic market. In July 2023, the Néstor Kirchner gas pipeline, which is 573 km long and has a capacity of 21 million cubic meters of gas per day, was brought on stream to bring gas to Buenos Aires and its suburbs.
The second of the three projects, TGS Puerto Galván (4 million tons of LNG per year), will be implemented in the city of Bahía Blanca on the shores of the bay of the same name in the Atlantic Ocean. As for the third project (Golar-Pan American FLNG), its production site is yet to be chosen.
Chief importers of LNG from new projects could include Brazil, which has more than doubled the capacity of its LNG regasification terminals in recent years. According to Global Energy Monitor, Argentina had only three receiving terminals – Pecém FSRU, Guanabara Bay FSRU and Bahia FSRU – in operation before 2020, with a total capacity of 17.5 million tons of LNG per year. However, the country has built five more terminals since: Sergipe FSRU and Porto do Açu FSRU (total capacity of 11.2 million tons of LNG per year), Sepetiba Bay FSRU (2.7 million tons per year), New Fortress Barcarena FSRU and Terminal Gás Sul FSRU (6 million tons of LNG per year each).
Imported LNG will be used by new and under-construction gas-fired power plants across Brazil. In 2020–2021, the country put into operation the Porto de Sergipe and GNA I power plants with an aggregate capacity of 2.9 GW; in 2025, the Novo Tempo Barcarena and GNA II thermal power plants with a capacity of 2.2 GW and 1.7 GW, respectively, will be connected to the common grid.
