Much of the sun-bleached desert in northwest Patagonia looks like it did 100 million years ago: a vast, prehistoric expanse where the world’s biggest dinosaurs once roamed.
But a different kind of behemoth has now come roaring in, with towering rigs advancing across the desert floor and burrowing deep beneath it in a furious rush for oil and gas.
The rigs’ gigantic iron legs are extracting shale oil and gas at levels never seen in Argentina before, turning a quiet stretch of the country into the thrumming center of a new oil and gas boom that is fueling a wave of optimism about the future.
“We reached the promised land,” said Raúl Krasuk, 69, who manages wells at the site for Vista, an Argentine energy company, as he sat in an oil field cafeteria that serves chicken breasts to workers who have come from all over Argentina for a slice of the bonanza.
President Javier Milei has called the oil and gas deposit — known as Vaca Muerta, or Dead Cow — a “panacea” for Argentina, with the potential to solve the country’s chronic economic instability by flooding it with dollars from exports. He has bet heavily on the project.
For the first time in the country’s history, crude oil overtook soy flour as the top export this year. Now, many in the oil sector invoke the promise of a second boom after the agricultural surge that, over a century ago, turned Argentina into one of the world’s richest countries.
“This is the big opportunity Argentina has to prosper,” said Rolando Figueroa, the governor of the Neuquén province, home to the shale-rich area many refer to as Argentina’s Texas.
The hedge fund of the American billionaire Peter Thiel, who has established a foothold in Argentina, recently reported that it had acquired over $76 million worth of Vista shares.
So many hopefuls flooded into Añelo, the town closest to the oil and gas reserves, that the mayor has pleaded with outsiders to stop coming.
Despite these questions, and challenges, what is clear is that much of the country has its eyes on Vaca Muerta.
“It’s a revolution,” said Mr. Banderet.
‘Vaca Muerta fever’
Mr. Banderet arrived in Añelo as a child when it was a small, deprived rural community. He spent much of his youth living in a converted bus, became a father at 16, and started work as a fruit picker.
Now everything has changed. As foreign governments and entrepreneurs courted him for oil-related opportunities in Añelo, he said he attended President Trump’s second inauguration, went on a trip to Israel and traveled to the Cannes film festival.
“It is the Vaca Muerta fever,” he said.
“Everywhere they say this is the oil capital,” said Ezequiel Barrozo, 27, who migrated to Añelo from the city of Rosario this year. He tripled his policeman’s salary back home, he said, by finding construction work in Añelo. “People told me that if I came here I would have a great opportunity,” he said.
This wild-west optimism is visible throughout the province of Neuquén, which surrounds Añelo. Restaurants are full, and hotels and residential complexes are rising, with names like the Shale Hotel or Petroleum Housing Complex. Shopping malls and truck dealerships are sprouting across barren expanses long ruled by winds and dinosaur bones.
“Hello, future of the country!” the school’s director, Gustavo Livoreiro, said as he entered a classroom.
‘Transformational change’
Over the past 10 years, Vaca Muerta has helped transform Argentina’s multi-billion-dollar energy deficit into a surplus, with greater gains expected in the future — especially amid global crises that heightened the appeal of a stable, conflict-free energy supply.
Mr. Milei has championed the energy sector with major investment tax breaks and made it easier to export fuel, driving progress on a vital new pipeline. Though past Argentine governments laid the groundwork in Vaca Muerta, Mr. Milei’s administration now stands to harvest its rewards.
The shale exploitation, combined with a new budget tightening by the government, marks “a structural, fundamental, transformational change,” said Marcelo Mindlin, the chairman of Pampa Energía, one of Argentina’s largest energy companies.
“Argentina has been a symbol of instability,” he said. “These two shifts have a real chance to rewrite that history.”
‘You are in, or you are out’
This confidence is not universal. Argentina remains sharply divided about the country’s new direction.
Critics point out that while machinery is roaring in the oil patch, in industrial hubs like the Buenos Aires Province, assembly lines have fallen quiet.
The disparity is visible in Neuquén. Many of those who work outside the energy ecosystem — like teachers or municipal workers — are being priced out of basic living. Even here in the country’s energy capital, Mr. Milei’s removal of state subsidies has made gas more expensive for many. Some, including some Mapuche Indigenous communities, lack gas connections to their homes.
They protest polluting gas flares, say chemical waste from the plants is often improperly handled, and warn that the industry’s water consumption threatens to deplete rivers already suffering the effects of climate change.
“They extract the oil and take it away,” said Olga Mabel Campo, a Mapuche community leader. “But we are the ones who stay.”
Ms. Campo’s son is an oil worker. Despite her opposition, it was the best work he could find in town, she said.
When an iron wrench spun out of control and struck his face, it knocked out all his teeth and lacerated his mouth. On another occasion, a fall from a rig platform fractured his spine and broke his leg.
Thanks to the workers’ compensation payout, she said, he was able to build a house in Añelo. And he keeps working in the industry.
“It’s something impossible to stop,” Ms. Campo said. “They say Vaca Muerta is going to save the world.”
Lucía Cholakian Herrera, Natalie Alcoba and Daniel Politi contributed reporting from Buenos Aires.
