Mendoza, the decision that was missing
The rock was always there. Around 30% of Vaca Muerta lies beneath Mendoza soil long before the word shale entered our vocabulary. The technology has been developing in Argentina for 15 years and is no longer a limiting factor for developing this formation. So what was missing then? Political will, and that decision was made. It was made to give continuity and expansion to our conventional operations, to open frontiers in unconventional resources but also to expand our energy matrix.
In Oil and Gas the paradigm shift is summed up in one phrase: we stopped administering contracts to move toward managing and developing a portfolio.
In practice it meant continuous bidding (of areas) instead of isolated rounds. It meant negotiated extensions before contract expiration to ensure their investment and activity would not falter. It meant incentives for the development of new technologies and for the sustainability of conventional operations rather than fiscal pressure that affects profitability and new reserves development. It meant processing timelines treated as an economic variable and not as inefficient administrative bureaucracy.
Mendoza is moving toward a strategy to sustain conventional oil production while advancing exploration in Vaca Muerta.
The numbers tell the story.
Nine areas awarded to six companies in this administration with over USD 85 million in commitments for exploration, drilling, and facilities. The last bidding round had been held in 2019, a single area, a single bidder, a single award.
Over USD 950 million committed under the Andes plan framework, which marked YPF's exit from 16 areas in our province, without a single day of operational discontinuity.
Total commitments exceed USD 1 billion.
New companies, focused on their assets, are reactivating wells, implementing improvements, investing in facilities, drilling new wells, revitalizing fields and generating new opportunities, employment, production, and tax revenue.
Mendoza is launching a new exploration campaign in the Vaca Muerta area. The announcements were made by Governor Alfredo Cornejo.
Exploration capital
There is one figure for those coming from the sector that means a great deal: Mendoza has returned to exploration. In a country where exploration risk has practically disappeared, the province incorporated new permits and is attracting capital for conventional and unconventional exploration. Exploration means deploying capital in search of something you don't know exists. That companies are willing to do it here says more than any official statement.
Internal state change
The State and its internal transformation had much to do with this as well. And that part is less often told. We did not compete with subsidies or short-term measures. We compete with information, with technical capability, with standardized and agile processes, we compete with predictability toward the private sector, with legal certainty, with clear rules, with institutional strength. We implemented management systems and certified our processes under standards. The one who controls also allows itself to be audited.
Vaca Muerta Mendoza
Its potential is a fact. Working on this acreage today are three different operators, something that was not the case two years ago. In October a new unconventional drilling campaign begins.
Three YPF wells that will be executed ahead of schedule. USD 44 million committed by the Quintana – TSB JV in Cañadón Amarillo with 3D seismic activity execution that had not been conducted in the province since 2017 (carried out in February 2026) and the drilling of two wells that were also accelerated according to the planned schedule. No company advances an investment where it doesn't have confidence. That is the best credit rating a management or province can receive.
Mendoza has infrastructure and a specialized supply chain such as IMPSA, a world reference.
The importance of the value chain
Geology and its potential are not sufficient conditions for industry development. Resources become reserves when political will supports them.
But these reserves would not be possible to develop or extract without a value chain that is up to the task. And in Mendoza it is. With experience, capability, infrastructure. And it is not about imposing local content quotas, but about developing real competitive capabilities, to make the value chain a technified, efficient and competitive sector.
The supplier that today qualifies to intervene in a well, tomorrow may qualify for a copper project, potassium, uranium. Inside or outside our province or even outside our country.
The decision to invest in an energy project is made looking 10, 15 or 20 years ahead. No one assumes the risk looking at who governs or looking at a single term. They assume it looking at whether the rules hold and Mendoza has spent years (a decade) demonstrating that provincial policy is not a risk variable that the private sector analyzes when making an investment.
This is why we no longer question whether we want to be an energy province. We already are. The resources are there. The political will is too. Investments are being executed. The value chain and the capacity of Mendoza's people are up to the task.
Today Mendoza stands present on the national and global energy map.
With conventional and unconventional hydrocarbons, with copper and other critical minerals, with photovoltaic generation, with hydroelectric generation and with a matrix that continues to diversify and expand to generate ever more opportunities.