2nd Argentina Energy Summit 2022

Neuquen Basin vs Permian Basin, and the winner is …

Key technical similarities and differences at basin level and current unconventional producing units
Historical pace of development and so far achievements
Potential size of the remaining price
Argentina’s challenges
Closing Remarks

Source: Boundaries of the Permian Basin extent and Permian sub basins are from US Energy Information Administration (2017)

The Permian basin has a total number of unconventional wells of about 45.000 wells (~80% of them are horizontal) and the current active drilling rigs are around 350
Neuquen basin with only 1.250 unconventional wells (~60% horizontal) and around 40 active drilling rigs
Total current cum: ~30.0 billions bbls oil vs Neuquen ~0.2 billions bbls oil (0.6% over Permian)

Both basins have excellent business cases and demonstrated important remaining resources
Both basins benefit from sharing same operators / services companies with common lesson learned and best practices
Sharing developing and implementing creative tools in drilling and completion create costs and time reductions in both basins
Proved high performance and efficiency in companies organized as factory model approach
Vaca Muerta has half of the acreage but only 4% has been drilled and 1% of cum production
But as in every match, there are other factors Argentina need to improve:

Access to market, both from equipment, tools, and materials, as well as customers
Local infrastructure might act as a massive development bottleneck
Administration incentives to producers and develop proper stable regulations for shale