SHALE OIL Y SHALE GAS EN ARGENTINA. ESTADO DE SITUACIÓN Y PROSPECTIVA

The production of oil and natural gas in Argentina has been declining since 1998 and 2005 respectively. Given this situation and facing a sustained growth of energy demand, the country has become an importer of natural gas and oil products. Recent international publications indicate that Argentina would have 802 Tcf of technically recoverable unproved shale gas resources (equivalent to 21,654 billion m3) and 27,000 million barrels of shale oil (equivalent to 4.293 million m3). These would represent respectively 67 and 11 times the current proven reserves of conventional hydrocarbons. This information has installed high expectations for the future development of these resources, and is presented as the solution to the current problems of hydrocarbons shortage. In the present work the latest information on resources and reserves has been systematized and analyzed, and prospective exploratory scenarios on oil and natural gas supply and demand are presented. Based on this analysis it is concluded that the development of unconventional oil and natural gas is feasible, but this requires more information based on local data, which will provide better and more reliable estimates of volumes of recoverable hydrocarbons, initial well productivity, extraction and decline rates, well water production, potential environmental impacts, among other aspects, allowing to generate more knowledge on the management of this resource. According to the scenarios, a period of at least 5 to 10 years will be required to recover self- sufficiency based only on unconventional resources, thus diversifying the expansion of hydrocarbons supply in order to avoid depending exclusively on unconventional resources is one of the ways forward.