The Vaca Muerta Shale is an oil shale field located in Argentina. Recent news and comments from several companies suggest that the Vaca Muerta Shale Formation could be one of the largest shale basins outside of North America. There are many companies starting to drill for oil in the Vaca Muerta Shale. These companies include YPF SA, Repsol, Apache, and EOG Resources to name a few.
Reserve Estimates - Oil company YPF SA recently raised It's unconventional resource estimates from around 900 million barrels of oil to nearly 22.5 billion. This comes after an auditing company accessed their Vaca Muerta Oil Shale field located in the Neuquen Province. This is a huge jump and if you add in other estimates, the Vaca Muerta Shale could be one of the largest oil shale fields in the world.
Move over Brazil, Argentina could become the new oil country in South America thanks to oil shale fields recently discovered.
- Several large companies began to show interest in the shale gas and shale oil potential of the western part of the Neuquen Basin where the two principal source rocks, the Vaca Muerta and the Los Molles shales are known to be widely distributed, have great thicknesses and are gas and oil charged. The large western blocks, operated by API, are aligned along a north south corridor which is emerging as the shale gas and shale oil fairway. In 2010, large concession blocks were made available by the provincial governments and several large oil companies, including Exxon Mobil, Apache, Total, EOG, Repsol YPF and Chevron acquired very large blocks offsetting API's acreage. In addition, Apache, one of the more experienced international shale gas players, farmed into one of API's largest blocks (Huacalera) to drill into the Vaca Muerta shale. In August 2011, the company announced a with Exxon Mobil on the Los Toldos blocks, with the primary focus being the Vaca Muerta Shale.
We believe Argentina's Neuquen basin could be the next key shale gas and shale oil country after the United States and Canada. With proven gas in widely distributed and extremely thick shales this forecast is nearing reality.
