Buenos Aires — The neighborhood seems deserted, yes it is not siesta time. With no paved streets, the dust and wind make walking unbearable. “It’s horrible,” says Marta, who tends a grocery store in the plateau neighborhood, the poorest area of the town of Añelo, the ‘capital’ of Vaca Muerta.
Marta arrived just a few weeks ago to accompany her oil worker husband. She came from the north and already wants to go back, as a result of the lack of infrastructure of a town that did not know how to - or could not, or did not want to - keep up with the pace of hydrocarbon growth.
And there are many more people like Marta. Añelo’s population grew by more than 60% between the 2010 and 2022 census. From 10,786 inhabitants to 17,893, according to official data. In addition, about 10,000 workers enter the city every day.
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Just a few meters away is the access to the wells of the geological formation called Vaca Muerta, the world’s second largest unconventional gas reservoir, and the fourth largest deposits of unconventional oil.
Just a few meters from the world’s second-largest shale gas reserve, around 700 families do not have access to the gas supply, according to the town’s mayor Milton Morales, who this year ends his term in office.
People have come to Añelo from the Argentine provinces, from Salta, Misiones, Formosa. From everywhere. Even from Venezuela and other countries in the region. The demand for jobs at oil companies, construction companies and service providers, filled the city with inhabitants, but more than it can support.
There is no health or education system that can meet the demand. A sad paradox is added to the demographic overflow: just meters from the second-largest shale gas reservoir in the world, about 700 families do not have access to the natural gas network, according to the mayor, Milton Morales, who after two mandates, will leave office this year.
Nor is there access to drinking water, adds mayor-elect Fernando Banderet.
“The oil companies carry millions of liters for fracking, which they take from the Neuquén River. If they can transport it for miles and miles, and millions of liters of water, how can we justify that it cannot reach the people?” Banderet asks, interviewed at a service station in the highlands of Añelo, on highway Route 7, which every day is filled with workers -mostly men- wearing colorful overalls, identified with the logos of the companies they work for.
One of those workers is Sergio, who works in one of the largest oil companies in Argentina and spends 14 days in the wells and 14 days with his family in the capital of the province. He has been working in the sector for more than 30 years and has seen, first-hand, the arrival of non-conventional technology and the revolution that Neuquén and Argentina are going through today, which condition their future to the dollars that may come in from this activity.
“Every day I learn something new”, says Sergio, who is already looking forward to retirement.
The impact of the elections
It is a special week in Añelo and in Neuquén. On Sunday, the citizenry marked a turning point. After more than 60 years, the Movimiento Popular Neuquino party (MPN) lost the gubernatorial elections. Rolando Figueroa, a former member of the MPN, will be governor of Neuquén as from December 10.
This turn of events was replicated in Añelo. Morales followed Figueroa’s steps and supported the candidacy of his successor, Banderet, who belongs to the UOCRA construction workers’ union.
Añelo is not the only town that has grown in recent years. 135 km to the north, Rincón de los Sauces, in the municipality of Pehuenches, has seen a population growth of 39%, from 24,087 inhabitants to 33,545.
From Añelo, 56 km toward Neuquén, is San Patricio del Chañar, a town that several workers choose because they consider that it is more prepared than the city of Añelo.
To go from Chañar to Añelo, and then Rincón (with a detour on Route 5), drivers must take Route 7, and which, according to Morales, was resurfaced three or four years ago but already needs new works.
“Route 7 is collapsed. It was not prepared and consolidated for the development of Vaca Muerta, that is why it is in the state it is in today and the number of accidents we have on the road. Years ago, from the provincial capital city of Neuquén to Añelo, a 110-km jpurney, it took about 45 to 50 minutes, today it takes three hours”.
That route 7 is, however, part of the few paved roads in Añelo. In the city center, only eleven streets are paved, streets where more and more housing projects are appearing every day.
Four families arrive looking for a place to live in Añelo every week, says the mayor.
“It is really a great challenge, ian enormous complexity that the development of Vaca Muerta has generated, especially in urbanizations like ours that demand more and more services”, says Morales. He directs his demands toward the provincial government, pointing out that the only resources the municipality receives are those agreed in 1994, when this city was inhabited by 501 people.
In addition to the collapse of the highway, the lack of housing and services, there is demand for hotel rooms, almost always occupied by those who do not live in Añelo and travel into the town for their shifts: 14 days for seven off, seven for seven, or 14 for 14, depending on the job and the position.
In the case of Matías and José it is 14 days work for seven days off. They are on the eve of their last working day before returning to the provincial capital to rest for seven days with their families. They are enjoying a beer while Argentine soccer team Boca win an agonizing victory in the Copa Libertadores. They are nearly 30 years old and have been in the business for more than five years.
Matías comments on the news that arrived that day from the city of Buenos Aires: Rucci, the union’s general secretary, obtained a 23% salary increase for the quarter between April and June, in what is the first agreement of the 2023-2024 union year.
Today, those who work as operators in exploration or drilling earn around 500,000 pesos ($2,220) per month. Matías recognizes this as a good salary, but it is not enough, as it is hard work, in all weathers, and with different risks every day.
“Our [union] members are doing well, but we want them to be better off. We are one of the best paid, I dare say in the country, but we are below inflation. Besides, you have to be in the field every day, far from your family, uprooted, not being able to see your children every day,” says Jara.
But in Añelo, they are not all oil workers. However, locals complain that prices in the town seem aimed at oil workers, or petrokas, as they call them. With rents that can exceed 80,000 per month ($355), while a a kilo of beef costs 3,500 pesos ($15.50), a neighbor says.
Argentina0s three-digit annual inflation reaches every corner of the country.
Banderet adds another problem, the environmental one. “The contamination is not discussed, it is out of the municipality’s area. There is no prepared environmental policy”, he says.
The future of Vaca Muerta
That same week, executives of the main companies operating in Vaca Muerta met in the provincial capital of Neuquén and shared the projections they expect for the coming years. Consultant Nicolás Arceo estimates that, “with a growth path similar to last year’s (13.5%) by the end of the decade, Argentina will be in the midst of an economic crisis”.
Argentina would be producing 1,250,000 barrels of oil per day, which implies about 750,000 barrels of exports which, at $70 per barrel, would represent $19 billion in reveues”.
“In gas, including LNG projects such as the one agreed between YPF and Petronas, it could reach 12 million tons per year in 2030, which would allow $20 billion of positive trade balance in the sector toward the end of the decade and exports above $25 billion (including oil and gas)”, according to Arceo’s calculations. These are similar numbers to those of the soybean industry in exports in 2021, and double those of the cereal industry that year.
“They always sold Añelo as Dubai, and the reality is that it is a miserable village next to the wealth that is being extracted. It is one of the conditions that we are going to have in the municipality, that they provide us with the resources that Añelo needs,” Banderet says, and who will take over as mayor on December 10.