Petronas in Talks to Exit Argentina’s Vaca Muerta Shale

Petronas has launched a process to potentially sell its interest in a Vaca Muerta joint venture which would see Malaysia’s national oil and gas firm exit the Argentinian shale region, sources with knowledge of the matter have told Bloomberg.

Petronas has already held discussions with a potential buyer about a sale of its 50% stake in La Amarga Chica joint venture with Argentina’s state oil and gas firm YPF, according to one of Bloomberg’s sources.  

If the sale goes through, Petronas would exit Vaca Muerta, becoming the latest major oil firm to have quit the Argentinean shale business.

Petronas struck a strategic alliance with YPF back in 2014 through its partnership in the La Amarga Chica project, as part of its growth strategy in the Americas.

However, at the end of last year, the Malaysian state firm ended its participation in a project to develop LNG export capacity in Argentina, as part of a deal between Shell and YPF to work on the $50 billion Argentina LNG project.

In the past months, several major international companies have either sold or started testing the waters for a sale of interests in Vaca Muerta.

Exxon in October struck a deal with Argentinian Pluspetrol for the sale of the supermajor’s assets in the Vaca Muerta shale play.

Norway’s energy major Equinor has reportedly held early talks to sell stakes in Argentinian shale operations to YPF, its joint venture partner in the assets.

Equinor, which entered Argentina in the 2010s, has both offshore and onshore interests in the South American country.

Onshore, the Norwegian oil and gas major holds interests in one exploration license and one producing block in the prolific Vaca Muerta shale formation.

France’s TotalEnergies confirmed this week that it was studying the sale of its Vaca Muerta assets.

“If we obtain the same price that ExxonMobil was paid, we are prepared to sell,” TotalEnergies CEO Patrick Pouyanné said at the CERAWeek conference in Houston.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

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