BUENOS AIRES: Ar­gen­tine Pres­i­dent Cristi­na Fer­nan­dez and Bo­li­vian coun­ter­part Evo Morales in­au­gu­rat­ed a gas pipeline that will en­able a sharp in­crease in Bo­li­vian gas ship­ments to the Ar­gen­tine mar­ket, where re­cent strong de­mand is threat­en­ing to out­strip sup­ply. The two lead­ers in­au­gu­rat­ed the Jua­na Azur­duy In­te­gra­tion Gas Pipeline, or GI­JA, via tele­con­fer­ence dur­ing a cer­e­mo­ny at the pres­i­den­tial palace that was broad­cast live on ra­dio and tele­vi­sion. Fer­nan­dez said the project is of "strate­gic" im­por­tance to Ar­genti­na and will en­sure the coun­try's fu­ture eco­nom­ic growth.

Ar­genti­na and Bo­livia agreed to build the US$43.2-mil­lion pipeline as part of a gas-ex­port con­tract that was signed in 2006 and calls for steadi­ly grow­ing ship­ments of the fu­el. The pipeline stretch­es 48 kilo­me­tres (30 miles) from the Mar­gari­ta gas field in Bo­livia to the Re­fi­nor re­fin­ery in Cam­po Du­ran, Ar­genti­na, where it will link up in the fu­ture with the Gas Pipeline of North­east­ern Ar­genti­na, known as GNEA. The new gas pipeline, named for a hero­ine of South Amer­i­ca's war of in­de­pen­dence in the 19th cen­tu­ry, will al­low ship­ments of nat­ur­al gas to rise to 7.7 mil­lion cu­bic me­tres (271 mil­lion cu­bic feet) per day through the be­gin­ning of 2012, when the amount of gas trans­port­ed will rise to 10.4 mil­lion cmd.

The goal is for ship­ments of Bo­li­vian gas to Ar­genti­na to even­tu­al­ly reach 27.7 mil­lion cmd. Gas ship­ments will in­crease sharply once the GNEA-US$6.22-bil­lion project still in the ten­der phase- comes on­line. Morales said the GI­JA will al­low "two broth­er­ly peo­ples to share their nat­ur­al re­sources." "I'm very pleased that in a short pe­ri­od of time we com­plet­ed this gas pipeline to guar­an­tee en­er­gy (sup­plies). Work­ing to­geth­er, think­ing about our peo­ple at all times, we'll keep work­ing," he said. Fer­nan­dez, for her part, pro­posed a new agree­ment where­by Bo­livia will sell ad­di­tion­al gas sup­plies to its sec­ond-lead­ing con­sumer (af­ter Brazil) in ex­change for ship­ments of liq­ue­fied pe­tro­le­um gas from Ar­genti­na to Bo­livia.

The Ar­gen­tine pres­i­dent said her gov­ern­ment is com­mit­ted to boost­ing gas sup­plies at a time when in­dus­try and oth­er large con­sumers are fac­ing cuts and Ar­genti­na is re­duc­ing gas ex­ports to en­sure suf­fi­cient sup­plies to house­holds. She said Ar­genti­na con­sumes 144 mil­lion cmd of nat­ur­al gas and that mil­lions of dol­lars will be in­vest­ed in gas-trans­port in­fra­struc­ture to boost con­sump­tion to 170 mil­lion cmd. "We're go­ing to en­sure Ar­gen­tine growth in strate­gic terms for all in­dus­try, so every­one has the cer­tain­ty that just as we're go­ing to con­tin­ue sus­tain­ing ag­gre­gate de­mand it will be nec­es­sary to keep sus­tain­ing pro­duc­tion," Fer­nan­dez said.

(lat­in­pe­tro­le­um.com)