A potential natural gas pipeline hooking up Argentina’s Vaca Muerta shale formation to southern Brazil will cost about $5 billion and “pose financial challenges,” according to Buenos Aires-based Wood Mackenzie.

Vaca Muerta

“Southern Brazil remains the most attractive regional market for potential excess gas production from Argentina,” Wood Mackenzie principal Ignacio Rooney told NGI’s Shale Daily. However, “such a project will require long-term commitments on the supply and on the demand side, and Argentina is not in conditions now to take such a bold position. 

“Another factor to take into account is how would a liquefaction project in Argentina might compete, considering the greater commercial optionality that it could provide for the country’s gas...