YPF increased oil production by 8.7 percent last year, the second year in a row with increased output, the state-controlled firm said yesterday in a news release.

Natural gas output also increased by 12.5 percent.

The firm also disclosed numbers for last month, which the company said it had recently filed with the Energy Secretariat, which revealed that oil (7.5 percent) and gas (14 percent) production also increased compared to December 2013.

“This represents an improvement on the performance of 2013. For the second year in a row, (the firm) outpaces the previous year’s output as part of its quest to contribute to the country’s self-suffiency” in the energy sector, the company said.

During the fourth quarter of 2014 natural gas production reached 34.3 million cubic metres per day, marking a sharp increase from the 28 million cubic metres per day in the first quarter of 2013.

As for crude oil, output in the last quarter of 2014 was 232,400 barrels a day, compared with 199,200 barrels a day of the third quarter of 2013.

These results, the company said, “do not include areas operated by (controlled company) YSUR” and confirm the growth of the state-run company “that during the last three years managed to revert the decline” in crude production that the company was undergoing since 2009.

A steady decline in production, as well as rising imports, was one of the key reasons used by President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner to expropriate a majority stake in YPF from Spanish company Repsol in 2012.

Date: January 16, 2015

Source: http://www.buenosairesherald.com/article/179645/ypf-oil-production-up-87