All posts tagged: Argentina


EU secures a dirty LNG deal with Argentina but no clean path with critical Mercosur partners

Days after his nation assumed the rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union, Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, opened a key session of the bloc’s meeting with the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC). Given its cultural ties to the region, Spain hopes to make progress on the European Commission’s new strategy for Latin America. This includes negotiating a new Free Trade Agreement with Brazil, Argentina and other Mercosur nations securing critical raw materials for the EU’s energy transition – in this case access to both the continent’s lithium and vast volumes of liquefied natural gas (LNG) for its still grey present. With Argentina set to join Brazil as a key supplier of oil and LNG, Brussels is seeking to install green strings onto their new agreements. But CELAC nations are pushing back, countering that their interests shouldn’t be dictated by their former colonial powers. As lead blogger and podcaster, Michael Buchsbaum, reviews, though oil deals are easy, Mercosur agreements are proving harder to forge.

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Riding the Dead Cow: exploiting Argentina’s oil and gas reserves risks climate efforts

Covering an area the size of Belgium, Argentina’s Vaca Muerta oil and gas field comprises the second-largest known reserve of shale gas and the fourth-largest reserve of shale oil in the world. During the COP27 climate conference in Egypt, the international environmental NGO 350.org issued a warning that exploiting the field’s full reserve could unleash a veritable “carbon bomb,” accelerating already quickly rising global temperatures while putting agreements to hold to a 1.5 degree rise out of reach. Now, in the wake of the world’s reaction to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, drillers are accelerating fracking activities as producers rush to backfill missing energy supplies. Supported by international investment banks and their partners, new pipelines and liquid natural gas terminals are enabling Argentina’s toxic hydrocarbons to capture long-term global supply contracts. 350.org’s Latin American Managing Director, Ilan Zugman and 350.org’s Senior Latin America Campaigner M. Victoria Emanuelli along with lead blogger Michael Buchsbaum review the situation.

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Vaca Muerta: Holding on to fracking subsidies instead of boosting the energy transition

The major shale oil and shale gas deposit Vaca Muerta (in English also: Dead Cow) covers a 30,000 square kilometers area located in three Argentinian provinces Neuquén, Mendoza and Rio Negro. According to the US Energy Information Administration, Vaca Muerta has a total of recoverable gas resources of 308 tcf (8.7 billion m3) and a recoverable oil and condensate of 16 billion barrels (2.5 billion liters), making it the world’s second-largest shale gas and oil deposit. A project of great political-economic interest, but also counterparted by the social and environmental impact inherent to the extraction of non-conventional gas and oil by fracking. And even further than that: while the world is turning to decarbonisation, successive Argentine governments have been persisting on succeeding their fossil energy models. Maximiliano Proaño Ugalde reports

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Tremendous, but untapped potential: a Green Recovery for Latin America

During the last months, Latin America has become the main COVID-19 focus worldwide. In early September, the region concentrated more than 27% of the COVID-19 cases globally and 31% of its deaths. High rates of inequality and poverty, failures in the health system and political instability are the main reasons for this dramatic situation. And it seems to get worse in the upcoming years: according to the UN COVID-19 will result in the worst recession in the region in a century, causing a 9.1% contraction in regional GDP in 2020. Consequently, the number of poor could increase by 45 million (to 230 million in total) and the number of extremely poor by 28 million (to 96 million in total). As political and social instability has already characterized 2019, the risk of a period of human rights violations and a lack of democracy is real. Maximiliano Proaño reports

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How the EU-Mercosur trade deal is worsening the international climate crisis

After twenty years of negotiations, the European Union is in the process of advancing one of the world’s largest free trade agreements with four states of Mercosur. The planned agreement suggests a political path that veers towards a worsening of the international climate crisis. Kathrin Meyer discusses the questionable contents of the political act, which will solidify inequality amongst the trade partners and enable the expansion of environmentally harmful methods.

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