Energy Companies Eye Argentina Shale Deposits, Meet Fracking Opposition

International energy companies are racing to tap Argentina’s Vaca Muerta shale formation, one of the largest untapped shale gas and oil reserves in the world — and they’re running directly into sustained resistance from the Indigenous Mapuche communities whose ancestral lands sit on top of it.

Vaca Muerta, located in the Neuquén Basin in Argentine Patagonia, was identified as a major shale play following a 2010–2011 discovery by YPF, Argentina’s state-run energy company, at the Loma La Lata field. The formation is estimated to hold some of the largest shale gas and oil reserves on the planet, placing Argentina alongside the United States, Canada, and China among the countries with the greatest shale hydrocarbon potential.

The government has moved aggressively to capitalize on that potential. In 2013, then-President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner signed what’s become known as the “Chevron decree,” granting special benefits — including exemptions from certain export taxes — to companies extracting and exporting oil and gas from Vaca Muerta. The decree cleared the way for a major partnership between YPF and Chevron, and fracking operations began that same year at the disputed Loma Campana field.

That expansion has not gone unchallenged. Mapuche communities living on and near the affected land have resisted since drilling operations began, organizing road blockades that have at times shut down access to drilling sites for weeks at a stretch. The conflict has turned hostile at points: in 2013, an observation post built by Mapuche community members to independently monitor extraction activity was destroyed in an arson attack, the same year Chevron began fracking the surrounding fields.

The land disputes underlying the conflict are not merely symbolic. Argentine authorities have acknowledged that at least part of the Loma Campana field — now among the most actively fracked sites in the country — sits on land belonging to Mapuche communities, a recognition that raises fundamental questions about whether affected communities ever gave meaningful consent to development on their territory.

Environmental concerns extend beyond land rights. Critics of the rapid expansion point to the risks fracking poses to water resources in an already arid region, along with air quality and soil contamination from drilling operations. Some geologists and residents have also linked fracking activity in the area to a rise in local seismic activity, though the government and energy companies have largely downplayed those concerns as extraction accelerates.

For the international energy companies now competing for a foothold in Vaca Muerta, the calculus is straightforward: Argentina is offering some of the most favorable terms in the world for shale development, at a moment when many other markets face tighter environmental scrutiny or declining reserves. For the Mapuche communities standing in the path of that expansion, the calculus is just as clear, but pointed in the opposite direction — a fight to protect land, water, and a way of life from a megaproject moving forward largely without their consent.