El transporte de gas natural en Argentina : análisis de la ruptura contractual y sus alcances

Tesis

Resumen

The role of economic uncertainty in the natural gas transport market is of great interest since pipeline construction costs involve significant expenditures, while at the same time these assets are highly risky due to the fact that they lack of alternative uses. Therefore, both this specificity and the market power of oil and gas companies justify the introduction of regulation in the market. Measures adopted by regulatory authorities that are different from the initially agreed ones may bring uncertain consequences on the cash flow stream. In Argentina the Public Emergency Law (L. 25.561) voted in 2002 implied a modification in the pricing scheme, deeply affecting the economic balance of natural gas transport firms since then. It should be noted that, under these circumstances, companies were forced to adjust their cost structure due to the inflation process unfolding for more than a decade. Consequently, this thesis addresses the contract break in the Argentinean natural gas transport system. In order to achieve this goal, the historical development of the market is described, a model is developed where governmental incentives to breach contracts are depicted, and economic consequences on the system efficiency are measured. After an introductory chapter where the thesis objectives are outlined, the evolution of the natural market in Argentina is presented. From the events observed in the last two decades, the analysis is focused on the contractual modifications after the Convertibility Law repeal. In the third chapter regulated contracts are analyzed through game theory. This theoretical approach is innovative since it aims at modelling critical factors that provide incentives for governments to break concessions or privatized contracts. This model is illustrated with the case of natural gas transport market in Argentina. In the fourth chapter, a cost stochastic frontier model based on costs from transport firms worldwide is estimated. The coexistence of income restriction and the lack of investment encourages to evaluate the relationship between contract breach and operative performance. In particular, it was possible to identify that, when there had been cost savings, this fact could have positively affected firms as regards costefficiency. Then, the fifth chapter supplements the efficiency analysis from a technical perspective. Through an original application of Artificial Neural Networks in the field of pipelines, a multilayer perceptron model was developed to detect changes in the technical efficiency after the rate constraint applied in 2002. In this respect, it was possible to detect that inefficiency was reduced due to income restriction. Finally, the main conclusions of this thesis are presented and future research topics are outlined to complete the proposed study.

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http://hdl.handle.net/11336/81338