Horacio Marín, CEO of Argentina’s state-owned oil company YPF, said at Gastech 2026 in Bangkok, Thailand, that two to three LNG sales contracts for the “Argentina LNG” project will be signed before the Final Investment Decision (FID) scheduled for November. The remarks were made on September 14.
Argentina LNG is a project that transports natural gas from the Vaca Muerta shale production area via a 527-kilometer pipeline to the Atlantic coast of Río Negro province, where it will be liquefied and exported using Floating LNG (FLNG) facilities. Ownership stakes are held by YPF (36%), Eni, and UAE state energy company XRG (32% each). The specific licensor for the FLNG facilities has not yet been finalized.
The total project cost is reported at approximately $24 billion. The combined production capacity of the initial two FLNG units is 12 million tonnes per year, with potential expansion to up to 18 million tonnes. Sales contract volumes are expected to range from 500,000 to 1.5 million tonnes per year per contract, and Argentina has completed its application for RIGI (Regime of Incentives for Large Investments) incentives for this project.
Argentina is pursuing a national strategy to become South America’s largest LNG exporter, leveraging the vast reserves of the Vaca Muerta shale gas field, and this planned signing of sales contracts is regarded as a key procedure underpinning the project’s commercial viability at the pre-FID stage.
LNG projects typically require securing a sufficient volume of long-term Sale and Purchase Agreements (SPAs) before financing and FID can proceed, and YPF’s remarks suggest that Argentina LNG is passing through the final gate toward FID. If South America emerges as a new LNG export hub alongside the United States and Qatar, LNG buyers in Asia and Europe would gain the benefit of supply source diversification, while competition on price with existing exporting countries could intensify. The participation of international energy majors such as Italy’s Eni and the UAE’s XRG in the ownership structure also illustrates a typical model in which Argentina secures the large-scale capital and technology needed to develop its domestic shale resources through overseas partnerships, which could serve as a reference case for other South American countries pursuing similar LNG projects going forward.
A primary point to watch is which buyers the announced two to three LNG sales contracts will actually be signed with, and whether the contract volumes and pricing terms will be disclosed. Whether the FID scheduled for November will actually be approved, and whether construction plans for the 527-kilometer pipeline and the FLNG facility procurement schedule will subsequently be disclosed, are also of interest. In addition, how the RIGI incentives will actually be applied in practice needs to be confirmed.