2023-07-14 22:05:00
On Sunday, July 9, the inauguration ceremony of the President Néstor Kirchner gas pipeline took place. There, President Alberto Fernández, Vice President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and the Minister of Economy and presidential candidate for Unión por la Patria Sergio Massa manually activated an operating valve. The event was broadcast on numerous platforms, and gave rise to misinformation about the completion of the work, which was verified by Reverso.
On Monday another misleading version went viral: a video in which a man points out that “what Cristina inaugurated yesterday” is being dismantled and that it is “all a farce”, since workers are seen removing the scraper trap (a mechanism that allows control and maintenance tasks to be carried out), which generated numerous reactions.
However, the video is misleading. The filming is real: it is not adulterated and it was recorded after the inauguration in Salliqueló, Province of Buenos Aires. But the operations that the anonymous author recounts are works to automate the operation of the gas pipeline. These tasks do not affect the filling of the gas pipeline, whose installations have already been completed, but are procedures for its correct operation.
The misinformation circulated on TikTok, WhatsApp and Twitter in a viral way.
The gas pipeline is not being “dismantled”
In the video an unidentified man is heard saying: “What happened here? They are dismantling what Cristina (Fernández de Kirchner) inaugurated yesterday. The scraper has already been removed, they put a blind flange. They are tightening the valve that Cristina opened yesterday. It’s all a farce.”
“A scraper, also known as a ‘smart pig’, is a cleaning and control device in a pipeline, which is ‘launched’ at the beginning of the section to be ‘swept’ and circulates with the same pressure as the fluid in the pipeline. It is received at the end of the section that was ‘run’ in a receiving facility”, explained to Diario Río Negro -allied media of the Reverso alliance- the vice president of the SIMA Engineering company, Diego Manfio.
And he specified that this receiving facility -the same one that can be seen dismantled in the viral filming- “has the characteristic of being like a bypass, which ‘encloses’ the scraper and recovers, while the gas continues to flow, once it has returned to close the bypass”. Unlike the pipeline itself, which is underground, scraper traps are surface installations.
From the press sector of the state company Energía Argentina SA (in charge of the bidding for the gas pipeline work), Mauro Djedjeian confirmed to Diario Río Negro that the video was filmed, in effect, in the place where the act of July 9. Capture of the video that circulated on WhatsApp, TikTok, Twitter and other platforms.
One of the workers seen in the video is wearing overalls that read “Lusalco SA.” This is a company dedicated to directed horizontal drilling, which was subcontracted by BTU SA, one of the 3 companies awarded the work, together with Techint and SACDE. In turn, from Energía Argentina they specified that the workers – from the company Lusalco SA – who are seen in the recording “are reinstalling the automation of the valve, which is how it should be.”
The president of the company, Agustín Gerez, expressed this Wednesday in statements to Radio FM Urbana Play that the gas pipelines are operated in 2 ways. The manual, which is used “only when the automated system is not working or has a problem”, and the automatic. The first of these is the one launched last Sunday by the national authorities during the gas pipeline inauguration ceremony. It was a symbolic opening, since the task of manually actuating the valve requires specialized personnel.
So, after the inauguration, the automation mechanism had to be reinstalled, explained Gerez, since, “for safety reasons, the pipeline operates primarily automatically and then, if there is any problem with this system, it is operated manually.” .
In general, the manual operation “is used to close the passage”, and he explained: “When you have a problem with a leak or you have to make a repair, you have to close it. If the automatic system that is directed through a computer does not work, you use the valve”.
Thus, the viral recording suggests that the gas pipeline is a “farce” since it is being “dismantled.” But that’s not what the operators are doing. The disconnection of the end where the scraper is inserted is due to the fact that the valve that was turned on July 9 was mounted so that it could be activated by the authorities at the inauguration ceremony, as Gerez pointed out. But the valve that will remain operative will be the automatic one that was later mounted, and for which the scraper head had to be disassembled first, as seen in the footage.
The filling of the Néstor Kirchner gas pipeline
Regarding the stages of the gas pipeline, “first the hydraulic tests of the entire system were carried out. Then comes the drying and then the filling with gas itself, which is also done gradually, from valve to valve, to [controlar] that there is no inconvenience”, they pointed out from the Government of Neuquén to Diario Río Negro. Currently, the facility is in the gas filling stage, which has to complete 25 million cubic meters.
Diario Río Negro consulted Energía Argentina about when the filling of the gas pipeline will be completed and from there they indicated that it will be between July 18 and 19. On June 20, pressurization tasks began at the plant in Tratayén, which lasted 3 days. “We calculate that the filling takes about 22-23 days,” explained Gérez, the president of the company.
Filling could be accelerated if injected from Salliqueló, that is, from the final end, but Geréz considered that “some technical modifications have to be made. In reality, for the days we save it is not worth it”. The pipeline’s initial inauguration date was scheduled for June 20. It was postponed due to the days that the pressurization of the plant in Tratayén was scheduled and the subsequent days that the filling would take.
The company Techint, a member of the Unión Transitoria de Empresas together with the company SACDE -in charge of two thirds of the gas pipeline work and complementary works-, was consulted by Diario Río Negro about the tasks that remain for the gas pipeline to start performing its tasks. functions that the gas pipeline begins to perform its functions. They explained that these are secondary actions that “do not affect the operation of the President Néstor Kirchner gas pipeline, such as revegetation, construction of quarries and some protection in specific areas.”
Therefore, going back to the viral video, the filming is real: it is not adulterated and it was recorded after the official inauguration of the work in Salliqueló, Province of Buenos Aires. However, and as told, it is misleading.
This note is part of Reverso, the collaborative journalistic project coordinated by Chequeado and AFP that unites media and technology companies to intensify the fight against disinformation during the electoral campaign.
The contact ways to join are: by email to [email protected] by WhatsApp and /ReversoAr on all networks.
Authors: Miquela Juarez and Victoria Terzaghi (Río Negro newspaper for Reverso)
Edition 1: Matías Di Santi
Edition 2: Ana Prieto
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