By Jonathan Gilbert (Bloomberg)– Sand shoveled out of an Argentina river utilized to transfer soybeans will certainly quickly come back 1,100 kilometers (700 miles) away in the nation’s flourishing shale areas.

Tecpetrol SA, component of billionaire Paolo Rocca’s realm, has actually begun getting sand that Belgium’s Jan de Nul transports from count on the Parana River to frack for gas in Vaca Muerta, a Maryland- sized shale development in Patagonia.

For Jan de Nul, which has actually been digging up the river because 1995 to include soy freights, the shale market is becoming a profitable side organization. River sand in Entre Rios district is perfect for hydraulic fracking, where a mix of water, sand and also chemicals is pumped at substantial stress to break rock deep underground. That’s since it’s primarily constructed from highly-resistant quartz.

Jan de Nul is dealing with various other sand firms operating the river that usually provide the building and construction market. It anticipates authorization today to dig up the financial institutions to feed a plant in Entre Rios, where it dries out and also sieves the sand. Jan de Nul’s not enabled to offer the silt it creates of the river network. Argentina is the largest carrier of soy dish and also oil.

Good Deal

The contract in between the dredger and also Tecpetrol competes a year from January and also covers as long as 70,000 statistics heaps.

Drillers require regarding 6,000 lots of sand for each and every shale well. At regarding $180 a load, consisting of $70 of trucking charges, the agreement deserves $12.6 million. For Tecpetrol, that’s a bargain, specifically because sand– understood in the market as a proppant– is a significant price for shale drillers.

Companies in Vaca Muerta, where Argentina is attempting to duplicate the success of the Permian Basin in the united state, pay closer to $200 a load for domestically-sourced sand. Sand delivered from the united state prices as long as $300.

Tecpetrol is among Argentina’s largest shale gas drillers, generating 17.5 million cubic meters a day at its front runner job Fortin de Piedra, though a battle with the federal government over aids might suppress outcome.

Jan de Nul is making invasions right into a market where large gamers consist of Cristamine, a provider to the glass market that’s caught the surge of shale over the previous 5 years. It has a quarry inEntre Rios There’s likewise Grupo Arenas Patagonicas, which runs in Chubut district. State- run YPF SA, which has actually pierced the substantial bulk of the about 1,000 wells in Vaca Muerta, vehicles in the sand from those quarries and also refines it on-site.

© 2019 Bloomberg L.P