Dead-cow bounce
Politics is the biggest hurdle to developing the enormous Vaca Muerta field
DRIVING north-west along a poplar-lined road from the city of Neuquén, orchards and wineries give way to a bone-dry land of stubborn brush, hardy wild horses and a sprinkling of Amerindian villages. Underground lies long unsuspected wealth: Vaca Muerta (“Dead Cow”), a shale formation the size of Belgium, has the potential to transform the country.
Argentina boasts the world’s second-biggest shale-gas reserves, most of them in Vaca Muerta. A survey by the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) suggests that the field holds 16.2 billion barrels of shale oil and 308 trillion cubic feet (TCF) of shale gas. That is more shale oil than Mexico and more shale gas than Brazil. It is enough to satisfy Argentina’s current energy demand for over 150 years, and could make the country an exporter once again.
This article appeared in the The Americas section of the print edition under the headline "Dead-cow bounce"
From the August 23rd 2014 edition
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