Economy Minister Luis Caputo confirms work on Santa Cruz hydroelectric dam will resume

Economy Minister Luis Caputo announced on Thursday that work on the Jorge Cepernic hydroelectric dam in Santa Cruz province is set to resume. Caputo confirmed the news on his X account, adding that the construction “could be completed by 2030” and is set to “contribute 1,860 GWh to the Argentine Interconnected System.” The project had initially ground to a halt in December 2023, the month President Javier Milei took office, due to a funding shortfall. Work on a second, larger dam named Néstor Kirchner was also stopped. Last January, the Santa Cruz provincial government announced that it would receive a US$136 million loan from China to complete the works, but new technical and economic conditions had to be agreed upon. According to a statement by the Economy Ministry, the works had been put out to tender in 2013 and were due to be completed in 2023, but “were plagued by breaches of contract, failure to update prices in line with rising costs, and an accumulation of complaints.” The statement adds that an estimated US$5 billion in investment is still required to complete the dam and its larger sibling, the Néstor Kirchner. Santa Cruz governor Claudio Vidal called it “one of the most important [works] in the country” in his announcement on X, and said 150 workers are undergoing medical examinations to join the company in the coming days. “It’s a project that will generate genuine employment, economic activity, and new opportunities for our people,” he stated. The dams are located 115 kilometers west of Puerto Santa Cruz. Before the 2023 pause, they had also been halted during President Mauricio Macri’s administration, but work resumed under President Alberto Fernández. The project was initiated in 2015 by Gezhouba, a Chinese construction and engineering company whose major shareholder is the Chinese government. It is estimated that work on the Jorge Cepernic dam is more than 40% complete, while around a fifth of the work on the Néstor Kirchner dam has been finished.