Bahía Blanca FLNG Terminal

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Bahía Blanca FLNG Terminal, also known as Tango FLNG Terminal and Terminal de Exportación de GNL de Bahía Blanca, is a mothballed LNG export terminal in Argentina.

Location

Table 1: Location details

Name	Location	Coordinates (WGS 84)
Bahía Blanca FLNG Terminal	Bahía Blanca, Buenos Aires, Argentina	-38.787784, -62.289504 (exact)

The map below shows the exact location of the terminal:

Loading map...

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Project Details

Table 2: Infrastructure details

mtpa = million tonnes per year

Name	Facility type	Status	Capacity	Total terminal capacity	Offshore	Associated infrastructure
Bahía Blanca FLNG Terminal	export	mothballed	0.5 mtpa	0.5 mtpa	True	Bahia Blanca GasPort FSRU; Vaca Muerta

Table 3: Cost

Name	Facility type	Cost	Total known terminal costs
Bahía Blanca FLNG Terminal	export	–	–

Financing

No financing data available.

Table 4: Project timeline

FID = Final Investment Decision, used by some developers to indicate a project will move forward

Name	Facility type	Status	Proposal year	FID year	Construction year	Operating year	Inactive year
Bahía Blanca FLNG Terminal	export	mothballed	–	–	–	2019	2020 (mothballed)

Ownership

Table 5: Ownership

Name	Facility type	Status	Owners	Parent companies	Operator
Bahía Blanca FLNG Terminal	export	mothballed	YPF SA [100%]	YPF SA [100.0%]	YPF

Table 6: Vessel ownership

Name	Facility type	Status	Vessel	Vessel owners	Vessel operator
Bahía Blanca FLNG Terminal	export	mothballed	Exmar Tango	Exmar	Exmar

Background

Excelerate Energy's FSRU docked in Bahia Blanca, Source: Excelerate Energy

In September 2018, Texas-based LNG company Excelerate Energy and Argentina’s Transportadora de Gas del Sur signed a memorandum of understanding to jointly study the technical and commercial viability of an LNG project at the port of Bahía Blanca for liquefying and exporting natural gas during the summer season. The companies expected to complete the study by the end of 2018.

In November 2018, Argentina’s energy firm YPF and Belgian energy shipping company Exmar signed a ten-year agreement calling for Exmar to deploy a floating LNG unit (FLNG) to the Port of Bahía Blanca in the second quarter of 2019, with an initial plan to export 500,000 tons of LNG per year to overseas markets. The FLNG unit, known as Tango FLNG, would export LNG from Vaca Muerta, one of the few shale gas plays in production outside the United States.

The vessel arrived in Argentina in February 2019. Operations at the Tango FLNG Terminal began in June of 2019. According to the U.S. Information Agency, the Tango facility was capable of generating up to eight LNG export cargoes per year.

In May 2020, the tolling agreement between Belgian company Exmar and Argentinian oil and gas company YPF SA was terminated, and the Tango FLNG left the Port of Bahía Blanca. A settlement was reached in October 2020 in which YPF paid $150 million to Exmar for failing to meet the terms of the charter agreement. (As of August 2022, the Italian company Eni had purchased the Tango FLNG from Exmar, with plans to redeploy it in the Republic of Congo beginning in 2023.)

As of May 2022, the Argentine government was reportedly contemplating construction of a larger land-based LNG liquefaction and export terminal, with a capacity of 15 to 20 million cubic meters per day, to be supplied with gas from Vaca Muerta via the proposed Nestor Kirchner Gas Pipeline.

As of September 2024, the Bahía Blanca FLNG Export Terminal remained inactive, and appeared likely to remain so, given the ongoing development of three larger export terminal projects in Argentina (Argentina GNL, Golar-Pan American and TGS Puerto Galván).

Articles and Resources

Additional data

To access additional data, including an interactive map of LNG terminals, a downloadable dataset, and summary data, please visit the Global Gas Infrastructure Tracker on the Global Energy Monitor website.