Work is advancing smoothly as planned: the phases including topography, the opening of the right-of-way and the semi-automatic welding tasks have all been successfully completed. The pipe defile and curved parts are over 50% finished, and the last truck transporting light tubes has been dispatched, while the other regular line steps are now under way.

The work being carried out by the Techint-Sacde joint Venture to build and lay sections 2 and 3 of the Reversal of the Northern Gas Pipeline is advancing at a good pace and according to plan. A major logistics effort was undertaken to mobilize and transfer equipment, materials and pipes, not just from Buenos Aires but also from other parts of the country, to Córdoba. In parallel, a double-joint plant was refurbished and staff hired and trained to run it.

From February to April, some 40 trucks departed each day from Tenaris’s plants in Valentín Alsina and the TenarisSiderca plant in Campana, both in the province of Buenos Aires, bearing a total of 100 km of 36” pipe making up the pipeline.

Over 53 days, 2,015 trips were made to transport 8,058 pipes, covering a total of 1,297,296 kilometers with no accidents.

At the same time, over 400 trucks left the province of Buenos Aires, with materials and structures for the crew camps, while more than a 100 trucks were deployed in Catriel, province of Río Negro, to ferry leftover materials from the President Néstor Kirchner Gas Pipeline (GPNK) to the new worksite.

In parallel, some 200 trucks from the company’s TEPAM Machinery Park transported construction equipment, such as motor graders, excavators, cranes, pipewelders and sidebooms (pipelayers), among other machinery, much of which had been reconditioned. The double-joint plant used at the GPNK was also refurbished at the Machinery Park before moving to the town of Ucacha, in Córdoba. This is a mobile industrial welding facility that automatically welds two 12-meter-long pipes together to make in a 24-meter-long pipe.

Challenges

Meanwhile, hundreds of workers were trained in the town of Etruria in the province of Córdoba, where the teams were being set up to carry out the project. The plan involves carrying out tasks simultaneously on several different work fronts in order to meet the deadlines, meaning that some 1,400 people will be needed onsite at the peak of work.

The construction of this 100-km gas pipeline crossing southern Córdoba, which must be finished by August, this year, involves building over 30 special crossings, including two provincial routes, two railways and four water courses.

The main objective of the Northern gas pipeline reversal project is to be able to supply the provinces in northern Argentina with gas from Vaca Muerta, thus substituting imports from Bolivia, where production is in decline.

Logistics in numbers

- 2,015 truck trips to transport pipes, carried out in record time

- 8,058 pipes transported

- 1,297,296 kilometers covered with no accidents

- A double-joint plant was refurbished at Ucacha and has been moved to Ticino.