Word effectiveness is key at Vaca Muerta. Companies are constantly looking for improvements in equipment to increase their productivity and reduce carbon emissions. QM Equipment seems to have found an alternative to these requirements with their 5,000 HP gas-powered fracturing pump. The project will be tested in the next few days at the Vaca Muerta deposit and promises to change the future of fracking.
The firm’s operators claim that the equipment will reduce the 200 million liters of diesel used per year in fracture repair services. Another positive point is that it would reduce the amount of equipment in the fields when the amount of pumps required by the fracking limits would be reduced.
The construction of this prototype has begun to bet on the future. The firm from Mar del Plata is characterized by being one step ahead of the market’s needs. An example of that vision is the development five years ago of the 3,000 HP bomb. Although no buyers were found, the company managed to sell six units. At present, the broken pump is constructed with them.
“We are always working in front of new technologies,” said Marcelo Guiscardo, member of QM Equipment and president of the Mar del Plata Energy Cluster, in an interview with +e.
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a new plan
The 5,000 HP broken gas-powered is the new project and the final design has not yet been determined. “It is a relatively new program that still has questions because it has not been fully defined. There is no sure way to do it, and we have a plan that we hope is good, but we won’t know until we test it in the field. We believe that it will work”, assured Guiscard.
QM technicians carried out the equipment on the turbine and the pump separately, and also tested part of the electrical commands. The last test of the equipment could not be done because the company did not get the gas. However, they estimate that the test will take place before the end of the month and, if the results are positive, he will work with full load for a year in Vaca Muerta.
The plan generates hope in the league. Several companies are involved in the testing of the prototype. “We still don’t know which one will be tested in the field, but there are several companies that want to take it with them. We are defining everything”, he confirms and stressed that Eco2Power is the buyer of the equipment and will be the one who decides where it will be tested.
“This bet has started on the future. I say the future of fracking, because when this system is consolidated, it will be very rare to build the Diesel-Lor equipment again,” he said.
It is a new system of testing for hydrocarbon companies, but the firm from Mar del Plata is already thinking of some problems in the manufacture: imports. “This model that uses 5,000 HP pumps work, which are not available in the market, because it is something new. So when we order pumps, we order 10. That can take as much as six months because it’s a combination of the time it takes to manufacture the equipment and the ability we have to authorize ourselves to go into the equipment plus everything. the issue of dollars,” he explained.
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In the future
In the QM Apparatus they turn their work in Vaca Muerta. Guiscard explained that in Vaca Muerta, Mar del Plata in Vaca Muerta, Mar del Plata built 200,000 HP, and this year only built 70,000 HP. “If Vaca Muerta requires another 200,000 HP, we can do it this year,” said the businessman.
The company can supply hydrocarbons to the industry and is ready to start producing equipment. “We are ready to construct a 50,000 HP fracturing set, which would be 10 5,000 HP pumps to work with the companies,” he considered.
A firm projection from Mar del Plata was made that, if the order was made these days, the fracture would be ready for the first quarter of next year. “Everything depends on how long it takes for the parts to arrive, but now, as we already have the turbines ready and everything else, in six months we can make ten parts of the equipment”, said also the president of Mare Energy Cluster del Plata and added: “If Vaca Muerta needs to be drained from 2024, we are ready to deliver 50,000 HP”.
The import of inputs is important for the manufacture of this equipment, but it has the support of the local industry. “For the type of equipment we build, the percentage that you have to introduce from outside varies between 30 and 60 percent. Everything else is done here,” he proposed.
“Each element has a time. For example, a Rocket machine can arrive in nine months. Another brand can take a little less or longer. It depends a lot on who the machine manufacturer is and how much capacity it has,” Guiscardo described.
“Bottlenecks are siren songs”
Marcelo Guiscardo stated that the country could provide a fracking industry, but companies prefer to import “obsolete machinery”.
The president of the Mar del Plata Energy Cluster said: “There is no bottleneck problem, there is no investment problem. We cannot build what is not bought by us”.
“There are siren songs on bottlenecks, which some companies like to do to bring old weapons to the United States of America, they want to use it there and use it in Argentina. That’s the thing, says the businessman.
