He hydraulic fracturing is enjoying a second life thousands of kilometers from the United States, where it has undergone a real revolution over the last decade. It is true that the industry hydraulic fracturing (hydraulic fracturing) and shale oil (shale oil, sometimes called shale) could have peaked in the United States, beginning a slight decline starting in 2025. However, Argentina’s plans to extract every last drop of its oil formation shale, more importantly, are gaining strength and along the way, they are evolving. a small town that was on the verge of disappearing. Although the results are already visible, the great oil boom in Argentina is expected to occur in the coming years, triggering the activity of a small mining population that, without oil, seemed doomed to disappear almost completely.
Sierra Grande, in southern Argentina, was home to the largest iron mine in Latin America, but its closure in 1991 It almost turned the place into a ghost town. As has happened in hundreds or thousands of cities around the world, the end of the activity that supported the population has begun to leave empty streets that years ago breathed the life of all their corners. In Spain, much of the interior of the two Castilles can be a good example. In the case of Sierra Grande, its 12,000 residents have a second chance and are now seeing renewed hope thanks to two multimillion-dollar projects that could make it a new oil mecca, according to the agency. EFE.
600 kilometers northwest, drilling crews are extracting from the depths of Vaca Muerta, the colossal unconventional hydrocarbon formation (shale oil And shale gas) from Argentina, gas and oil which, in a few years, could be exported from Punta Colorada, above the Atlantic waters and about 30 kilometers from Sierra Grande, when the initiatives carried out by the oil company YPF, controlled by the Argentine State, will bear fruit. .
The boom of Vaca Muerta
According to the RICSA consulting firmoil extraction in Vaca Muerta has already climbed 35.5% compared to August 2023, accounting for 55.99% of all national crude oil production, with 34 new wells in operation. Furthermore, in the case of gas, it increased by 21.9% compared to the same period of the previous year. This revolution has become the great hope of the Argentine people. What’s happening at Vaca Muerta is just the beginning of something much bigger.
YPF is already building a pipeline to transport crude oil from Vaca Muerta to Punta Colorada, a point of the province of Río Negro recently chose to also build a gas liquefaction plant there, a project that will require $30 billion and this will make Argentina the fifth world exporter of liquefied natural gas (LNG) by 2030. Even if there are many hopes, in the Sierra Grande, we still do not fully believe in them and some of its inhabitants are still torn between hope and skepticism. .
The city, located 1,160 kilometers south of Buenos Aires, was home to the state-owned Hipasam mine, the largest underground iron mine in Latin America. Opened in 1970, it closed abruptly in 1991. Without alternative sources of work, the town went from about 28,000 residents to just 3,500 in one year. “From one year to the next, it became almost a ghost town because almost 80% of the population left. Most of us had to look for work outside the city”count up EFE Rubén Stubbe, a resident of the town since 1973 and who worked at the iron processing plant almost until its closure.
Three decades later, there are still houses and warehouses abandoned after this exodus. The mine was sold in 2006 to the Chinese company MCC with a view to its reactivation, but since 2016 it has no longer produced and has barely fifty employees.
An initiative to build a nuclear power plant also failed and the project announced in 2001 to produce green hydrogen is still in force, although without visible progress. Stubbe, 67, chairs the local nursing home and recently got to know Vaca Muerta along with other neighbors through an invitation from YPF.
Housing and land are soaring
“This helps show that the project is real. But 60% of residents are very suspicious because they promised us a lot of things during these years of malaria (bad luck),” he emphasizes. But the truth is that they are starting to notice movements in the city: new faces, abandoned sites being reactivated, land purchases and real estate prices rising intensely. Also hire truck drivers, for example. In the absence of pipelines, oil is often transported in large trucks that must make hundreds of trips from Vaca Muerta to crude oil storage centersrefineries or export zones of the country.
“Sierra Grande is moving in an unexpected direction. Land prices have skyrocketed. A property in the center that wasn’t even worth $50,000 a few days ago is about to be sold for $180,000 to a bank that wants to open up, the madness is starting to manifest itself,” he said. EFE Osvaldo Videla, who has lived in the city for 15 years, where he works at a radio station.
A town of “Petrokas”
Oil production at Vaca Muerta now stands at 402,706 barrels per day with 3,785 wells in operationwhich represents an increase of 34 operational wells compared to July 2024. Thanks to Vaca Muerta, crude oil production in Argentina is at its highest level in the last 20 years, as reported by eleconomista.es. These results highlight the continued growth and positive projection of Vaca Muerta as a fundamental pillar of oil production in Argentina.
“We’re going to be ‘petrokas,’ as oil workers are called, who waste money because they don’t know what to spend it on,” jokes Videla, who, in a serious tone, points out that Sierra Grande is one of the poorest municipalities in the province. Its inhabitants live mainly from public employment, small commerce or tourist activity in Playas Doradas, 28 kilometers from Sierra Grande.
The LNG project alone could generate around 2,500 direct jobs and 10,000 indirect jobs. and training activities have already been launched so that locals can apply for future jobs, as revealed by the EFE agency in its report. “Until a few weeks ago, no young people had the intention of staying in Sierra Grande. My daughter is in the last year of technical school and has already started the courses provided by YPF. And the province and the municipality do training in the construction sector” says Videla.
Local authorities are already planning infrastructure, healthcare and new schools to accommodate population growth. “Maybe in ten years we will lose the tranquility that we have today with maybe 50,000 inhabitants. It’s a bit scary. But there will be new opportunities, work. It will be like starting again and I ‘I’d love to be able to go see it,’ he said. a hopeful Stubbe.
