September 05, 2024 [Oilprice]- Independent producer Vista Energy, the second-biggest shale producer in Argentina, plans to invest around $1.1 billion in the growing shale basin Vaca Muerta, the company’s founder and CEO Miguel Galuccio told Reuters in an interview published on Wednesday.

The Vaca Muerta shale play in Argentina is the top development priority for the company, which also operates an onshore oil and gas field in Mexico.

Vaca Muerta—Spanish for ‘dead cow’—has been dubbed the Argentinian Permian, although its geologic properties have been compared more appropriately to the Eagle Ford.

The Vaca Muerta shale play is estimated to hold recoverable resources consisting of 16 billion barrels of oil and 308 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. Those numbers make the Vaca Muerta the world’s second-largest shale gas deposit.

Apart from investing $1 billion in the basin, Vista Energy also aims to achieve a double-digit drop in costs and boost efficiencies, Galuccio told Reuters.

“In 2012, Vaca Muerta was for believers. Today Vaca Muerta is for engineers,” the executive said, referring to the production gains operators can achieve from the shale play.

Vista Energy has up to 1,150 locations under development in Vaca Muerta, including 124 wells already drilled. Total production stood at 65,300 barrels of oil equivalent per day (boepd) in the second quarter of 2024, according to the company’s website.

Vista Energy, which is listed in New York and Mexico, also boasts that the productivity of its shale oil wells is among the best in the basin.

Argentina plans to raise oil and gas output and exports from Vaca Muerta in the coming years.

Supertankers could begin docking in Argentina to load oil from the country’s shale patch after a pipeline is set to connect Vaca Muerta with a terminal at Punta Colorada port capable of handling the so-called very large crude carriers (VLCCs).

Argentina is also moving a step closer to exporting LNG and monetizing its huge resource in the Vaca Muerta after maritime LNG infrastructure firm Golar LNG signed a 20-year deal with Pan American Energy (PAE) for the deployment of a Floating Liquefied Natural Gas (FLNG) vessel in Argentina.

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