🇦🇷Argentina just greenlit the largest liquids processing investment in its history: $ 3B
But the headline number isn't the story.
The story is what's been quietly capping Vaca Muerta and what happens when that cap comes off.
TGS will expand its Tratayén plant to 43M m³/d, build a 550 km multiproduct pipeline to Bahía Blanca, and add fractionation an export terminal there.
Output: 2.7M tonnes/year of NGLs for export.
$1.2B/year in hard currency.
Startup 2029–30.
Vaca Muerta gas is "rich" loaded with propane, butane, gasoline.
No way to process and move those liquids = constrained gas output = capped OIL output too.
This isn't a liquids project.
It's the cork coming out of the whole basin.
The tell that this is real: 80% of capacity is already contracted YPF, Pluspetrol, Chevron.
Producers don't sign long-term throughput deals for fun.
They sign when they know the molecules are coming.
Same rule as Gunvor in the Haynesville watch what's bought, not what's said.
Add it to the map Petrobras in Campos, Shell in Venezuela, Gunvor in US shale, now $3B into Vaca Muerta.
4 deals, 1 direction energy capital is rotating to the Atlantic, where barrels never meet a chokepoint.
The Gulf has the crisis.
The Atlantic has the order book.
I wrote an article on my favourite stock in the Argentinian oil&gas industry, link in replies