Can ‘Argentina’s Texas’ Save the Country’s Economy?

Can ‘Argentina’s Texas’ Save the Country’s Economy? - The New York Times

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Can ‘Argentina’s Texas’ Save the Country’s Economy?

Thousands of Argentines are flocking to a remote stretch of Patagonia, seeking work with only backpacks, tents and the hope that they and their country can turn around their fortunes.

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Can ‘Argentina’s Texas’ Save the Country’s Economy?

Thousands of Argentines are flocking to a remote stretch of Patagonia, seeking work with only backpacks, tents and the hope that they and their country can turn around their fortunes.

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By

Emma Bubola

Visuals by

Sarah Pabst

Emma Bubola reported from the oil fields in Neuquén, Argentina.

Aug. 24, 2026

Updated 12:18 p.m. ET

Leer en español

Much of the sun-bleached desert in northwest Patagonia looks like it did 100 million years ago: a vast, prehistoric expanse where the world’s biggest dinosaurs once roamed.

But a different kind of behemoth has now come roaring in, with towering rigs advancing across the desert floor and burrowing deep beneath it in a furious rush for oil and gas.

The rigs’ gigantic iron legs are extracting shale oil and gas at levels never seen in Argentina before, turning a quiet stretch of the country into the thrumming center of a new oil and gas boom that is fueling a wave of optimism about the future.

“We reached the promised land,” said Raúl Krasuk, 69, who manages wells at the site for Vista, an Argentine energy company, as he sat in an oil field cafeteria that serves chicken breasts to workers who have come from all over Argentina for a slice of the bonanza.

President Javier Milei has called the oil and gas deposit — known as Vaca Muerta, or Dead Cow — a “panacea” for Argentina, with the potential to solve the country’s chronic economic instability by flooding it with dollars from exports. He has bet heavily on the project.

Map show the location of the Vaca Muerta shale formation in Argentina.

ARGENTINA

CHILE

Córdoba

Buenos

Aires

Detail

area

ARGENTINA

Neuquén

Vaca Muerta

Añelo

Neuquén

PATAGONIAN

DESERT

100 miles

Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration.

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