BUENOS AIRES, Mar 19 (IPS) – For about three years now, Argentines have been listening to nearly each month that oil manufacturing is breaking new data. Trying forward, the nation is projected to grow to be a serious world provider of what stays essentially the most sought-after vitality supply.
These developments, offered as hopeful information for an economic system that has been in deep disaster for a minimum of 12 years – with a decline in per capita GDP, worsening revenue distribution, and rising poverty – nonetheless elevate many questions.
Critics query the distribution of financial advantages, the inhabitants’s entry to vitality, the growth’s environmental and social affect, and the digital abandonment of the nation’s local weather objectives and commitments.
The so-called Neuquén Basin, within the nation’s southwest, is the epicenter of an oil exercise growth that sectors of academia and environmental and social organizations describe as overly aggressive.
“Within the final 10 years, exploration started in agricultural areas. Since 2012, 3,300 oil wells have been drilled, 440 of which have been accomplished in 2024. Over 500 wells are deliberate for 2025,” researcher Agustín González informed IPS.
González, an agronomist and professor on the Nationwide College of Comahue, which has campuses in Neuquén and Río Negro – two provinces within the Patagonian basin the place the Vaca Muerta geological formation is positioned – highlighted the affect of this growth.
This area, which sparked the hopes of Argentine politicians and businessmen in 2011 when the U.S. Vitality Administration categorised it as one of many world’s largest reserves of shale fuel and oil, is lastly starting to yield outcomes, typically on the expense of different sectors.
Shale hydrocarbons are extracted utilizing a method known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, and González warns that its widespread use is inflicting vital impacts in a historically agricultural area recognized for its high-quality fruit manufacturing.
Impression on Native Communities
“Fracking is extraordinarily violent. It makes use of 30,000 liters of water per nicely, combined with over 60 chemical compounds and high-powered pumps to fracture the rock. It has nothing to do with standard oil exercise,” González defined.
“Fracking impacts all close by land makes use of. When it’s achieved close to a river, a farm, or a populated space, it places them in danger,” added González, who’s a part of a joint analysis group on the environmental and social affect of Vaca Muerta, involving the College of Comahue and the Stockholm Atmosphere Institute.
“The event of fracking have to be balanced with the safety of pure assets, meals manufacturing, and social fairness, establishing a sturdy regulatory framework to stop irreversible harm to ecosystems, agricultural areas, and native communities,” warns a research revealed final December by this group of researchers.
Nevertheless, this doesn’t appear to be the most effective time to debate these points in Argentina, the place far-right President Javier Milei has downgraded the Ministry of Atmosphere to a minor division below the Secretariat of Tourism and has utterly rejected not solely the local weather agenda but in addition the strengthening of the state’s position as a regulator of productive and industrial actions.
“The federal government has defunded the Renewable Vitality Growth Fund (Foder) and outright closed the distributed vitality fund,” Matías Cena Trebucq, an economist on the non-governmental Atmosphere and Pure Sources Basis (Farn), informed IPS.
The knowledgeable added that “whereas earlier governments had a debated give attention to pure fuel as a transition gas, the Milei administration is now absolutely dedicated to fossil fuels and has eradicated any reference to a path towards clear vitality.”
In 2015, the Argentine Congress handed a legislation setting a purpose for 20% of the nation’s electrical energy consumption to come back from renewable sources by December 2025. In 2024, the sector grew resulting from older initiatives coming on-line, reaching 15% of era, however it’s unlikely to proceed rising with out state help.
Constructive Steadiness
Due to current traits, Argentina achieved a optimistic vitality commerce steadiness in 2024 for the primary time in 13 years, with exports exceeding imports by US$5.668 billion.
Exports of fuels and vitality grew by 22.3% final yr in comparison with the earlier yr, reaching $9.677 billion, accounting for 12.1% of the nation’s whole exports, in line with official knowledge.
The principle rationalization for these figures lies within the growth of fracking in Vaca Muerta, which contributed 54.9% of all oil manufacturing and 50.1% of fuel nationwide. In December alone, Vaca Muerta produced 446,900 barrels of crude oil (159 liters every), 27% greater than in the identical month of 2023.
Standard oil and fuel manufacturing, then again, continues to say no as a result of depletion of the San Jorge Gulf Basin within the Patagonian province of Chubut, which was historically the nation’s foremost oil-producing area.
Whole manufacturing in 2024 was 256,268,454 barrels of oil, 11% greater than in 2023. This marks 4 consecutive years of development, pushed solely by unconventional oil from Vaca Muerta.
Because of the potential of this geological formation, numerous research circulating within the sector recommend that Argentina is on monitor to succeed in US$30 billion in annual oil exports by 2030 and place itself as a worldwide provider.
“The Argentine oil business has superior over the past 15 years, whatever the authorities in energy,” Gerardo Rabinovich, vice chairman of the non-governmental Argentine Institute of Vitality (IAE) Basic Mosconi, informed IPS.
He added that “in the present day, the advantages are being reaped, the sector will proceed to develop, and it’s potential that the purpose of US$30 billion in exports shall be reached earlier than 2030.”
“In 2022, we had an vitality commerce deficit of US$4 billion, and in 2024, we achieved a surplus of over US$5 billion. That is essential for Argentina,” he added.
Nevertheless, the flip aspect of this actuality is that, as a result of brutal adjustment of public accounts by the Milei authorities, home demand for gasoline and diesel fell by 6.5% and 5%, respectively, in comparison with 2024, in line with an IAE report, stated Rabinovich.
“The Milei authorities has proposed utterly liberalizing oil exercise, displacing the state, and aligning native costs with world ones,” Fernando Cabrera Christiansen, a researcher on the Southern Oil Observatory, informed IPS.
Cabrera, talking from Neuquén, the place he lives, famous that the expansion of Argentina’s oil manufacturing has not led to larger well-being for a predominantly impoverished inhabitants, nor has it made vitality cheaper regionally.
He emphasised that, whereas over US$40 billion in investments have flowed into Neuquén within the final decade, in line with knowledge from the provincial Undersecretariat of Vitality – an quantity unmatched by another area – social indicators stay as alarming as these in the remainder of the nation.
“The province makes use of oil royalties to pay public salaries and different present bills. It’s not sufficient to construct infrastructure or present social advantages. And poverty ranges in Neuquén are much like the nationwide common,” he concluded.
© Inter Press Service (2025) — All Rights Reserved. Authentic supply: Inter Press Service
