For a decade, Vaca Muerta was a massive promise: the world's second-largest shale gas and fourth-largest shale oil formation that could never be fully monetized. The bottleneck was never geology or costs (new well breakevens hover around $40-45/bbl), but evacuation infrastructure and macroeconomic volatility. Both constraints are breaking open simultaneously. The Oldelval expansion (Duplicar project) has already doubled capacity toward the Atlantic, the pipeline to Chile has been reactivated, and the RIGI-backed VMOS (Vaca Muerta Oleoducto Sur) project is scheduled to begin pumping oil at the turn of 2026/2027, ultimately adding several hundred thousand barrels per day of export capacity via the new Punta Colorada deepwater terminal.
The second pillar is macro normalization. Following the reform coalition's midterm election victories in autumn 2025, sovereign country risk dropped from ~1,500 to 600-700 bps, allowing energy producers to return to international debt markets at coupons significantly lower than a year earlier. In an industry where production growth directly tracks drilling activity, cheaper capital accelerates both capex and volume ramp-ups. Argentine crude output is already at two-decade highs and expanding at 25-30% annually, driven almost entirely by shale.