Electric power and infrastructure for the basin
Electricity is not going to reach Vaca Muerta through a plan: of the 16 projects in the national high-voltage line plan, none supplies the basin —the only one that touches Neuquén ends at Piedra del Águila, more than 200 km from Añelo, and serves to carry Patagonian generation out— and the list the provincial utility presented in September 2026 does not touch it either. Meanwhile the fields make their own electricity by burning diesel on top of a gas field. That is the market, and it is not empty: YPF itself supplies Loma Campana with a 17 MW plant run by its own power company since 2017, and there are at least nine firms renting equipment in the basin. What nobody has built yet is the system that supplies several operators at once — which is exactly what the country's largest thermal generation manufacturer proposed out loud, and nobody executed.
On this page
What the market is made of
The ~USD 330 M split into two blocks, and only one is the one you can take. Electrical operations and maintenance across the basin are mostly on installations that already have an owner; generation inside the field is the open block.
Transmission (Transener, 500 kV) and distribution (EPEN) are closed regulated monopolies; generation connected to the national grid is an oligopoly (Pampa, YPF Luz, AES, Genneia). Not addressable. estim
Addressable: generating power inside the field and selling it under contract, and powering electric fracturing fleets. There is equipment on offer and the operators generate for themselves; what we did not identify is a basin-scale operator. estim
Diesel costs several times what the gas the field has next door costs, and both series are published with a date: gas at the transport system entry point is auctioned by MEGSA and diesel is published by the Secretaría de Energía station by station estim. On that basis, whoever assembles supply for several operators at once takes a place that today has no owner thesis.
Why we do not put a number on it There is no public figure for how much generating capacity sits inside the basin's fields today. The only number that existed —28.1 MW in 2024— is the peak of one substation, not the field's generation nor the basin's, and the previous version of this sheet multiplied it by 27 to reach 750 MW with no source behind it. Without a capacity base and without a published price for the service, any slice would be a number invented to fill the line.
Who really pays?
The model is selling power under contract and not the equipment, and the door changes with what you sell. There are three, and they are not approached the same way:
The large operators today generate with diesel engines while having their own gas next door. Equipment rented against the contract lowers the capital friction.
The first fleet was unloaded at Zárate on 8 September 2026 and three more are coming, all inside a five-year contract between the largest operator and a frac company — which makes it less likely the power will be tendered separately. That a frac company cuts a fleet's fuel cost from ~USD 33 million to ~6 a year by switching to gas says the company doing the fracturing is watching this arithmetic too.
⚠️ Outside the national grid. The national battery tender was awarded on 7 July 2026 —700.5 MW to five companies across seven regions— and left not one megawatt in the basin or in Patagonia. And it drew 8,338 MW of bids for 700 MW: in that channel supply is abundant, not scarce.
Which projects move this demand
YPF mega-development: plateau of 240,000 bbl/d in 2032, 1,152 wells. A signal of the scale jump in Neuquén upstream leveraged on already-secured…
see the project →When the window opens
Demand for in-field generation grows with every well that comes on production and every fracturing fleet that plugs in instead of burning diesel. On the other side there is no project that switches it off at a stroke: none of the 16 projects in the national high-voltage line plan supplies the basin, and the list the provincial utility presented on 10 September 2026 does not touch it either. Electricity arrives one area at a time and the operator pays for it: TotalEnergies laid 43 km of line to Aguada Pichana Este for USD 22 M and in May 2025 transferred it to the provincial utility. Each of those projects switches the business off in its own area and in no other. These four numbers publish themselves, with a date.
If a large operator, a generator or a transmission company builds the centralised generation and the network Siemens Energy proposes, the place is taken. thesis
Every high-voltage line an operator pays for and hands over to the provincial utility switches the business off in that area — and only that one. It already happened: TotalEnergies at Aguada Pichana Este, May 2025. No calendar announces it. thesis
The opportunity in depth
The opportunity in depth
Generate power inside the field —with the formation's own gas, and batteries where round-the-clock firm power is needed— and sell it under contract instead of selling the equipment, charging the gap between the diesel burned today and the gas next door.
Power the electric fracturing fleets, which draw tens of MW each. The first arrived in the country in September 2026 and three more are coming.
Round-the-clock firm power with batteries, for a basin that does not stop. ⚠️ Outside the national grid: the national battery tender was awarded in July 2026 and left not one megawatt in the basin.
When you get paid, and what blocks it
already in
split
Regulated; Edison-Genneia co-ownership + Mindlin group. Closed to new entrants.
Regulated.
Pampa 5,472 MW prob installed capacity declared by the company; YPF Luz ~10% of the country.
Buys gas at the wellhead, generates power and deploys data centres without connecting to the grid. 14 sites in Texas (>200 MW) prob self-declared by the company. In August 2026 it announced USD 25 M for 20 MW off-grid in Vaca Muerta. ⚠️ It does not sell power to the operators: it brings its own demand.
See the remaining player
There is equipment on offer —nine generator-set companies in the sector directory, counted on 14-Sep-2026— and there is generation the operators run themselves. What does not exist is an operator supplying several of them at once. A global manufacturer proposes the equipment and does not operate it; the power for electric fracturing is decided inside the contract between the largest operator and a frac company.
The jobs it createsUses gas that is flared today (lower emissions), lowers the energy cost of the whole basin and creates electrical maintenance jobs. thesis
calculate it
The number comes from multiplying the year’s activity by the unit price, and it is cross-checked against independent methods that give the same result.
The full calculation, step by step
Concentration High in transmission and distribution (regulated monopolies); medium-high in generation connected to the national grid. Inside the field, supply is split between rented equipment and each operator's own generation: we did not identify a basin-scale operator within the universe we reviewed.
The rule that moves it
What moves this line of business is not a reform that creates it, but the provincial investment regime —which makes installing generating equipment in the basin cheaper— together with the pressure to stop flaring the gas that comes up with the oil and sell it as electricity. The national high-voltage line plan does not enter the calculation: we opened its annex and none of its 16 projects supplies the basin.
See the underlying reading
The underlying policy that opens up this demand. It is the same inference declared by the rules and the program pillars pushing in this direction.
better export netbackNeighbouring markets5 markets in the same group, from USD 7 to USD 850 M a year
See the remaining 2 neighbouring markets
Metalworking, boilermaking and industrial maintenance~USD 400 M - 700 MMonitoring, reporting and verification (MRV/LDAR) of methane and GHG~USD 7M - 18MHow we validate this figure
This figure has been corrected twice, and both times downwards. The first (Jun-2026): the original headline of ~USD 1,050 M did not add up —its own blocks summed to ~678 M and dragged in fuel, which is billed separately and is nobody's revenue— and it came down to ~490 M. The second is from now: the headline included a USD 158 M block for a share of the national high-voltage line plan attributed to the Vaca Muerta corridor. We opened the official annex to Resolución 715/2025 in the Boletín Oficial and counted its 16 projects one by one: none supplies the basin. The only one that touches the province of Neuquén is an alternative ending at Piedra del Águila, on the Limay, more than 200 km from Añelo, and it serves to carry Patagonian generation towards Comahue. The block came out, and the headline landed at ~330 M.⚠️ What is left is smaller, and we have to say what holds it up. The in-field generation block rests on a single public measurement —demand at the Loma Campana substation, which went from 13.2 MW in 2022 to 28.1 MW in 2024 according to statements by the provincial utility to the press prob— and that figure is for one substation, not the basin: extending it to the whole basin is an assumption of ours, not a datum. That is why the seal is an estimate, and why this page publishes no entry wedge in dollars: there is no public figure for how much generating capacity sits inside the fields today.
Coverage: the «Generator sets — sale, repair and rental» category of the Guía Vaca Muerta, the sector's commercial directory, opened and counted in full: nine companies. The provincial register of certified suppliers is no use here, because it has no energy or generation category · Sep 14, 2026 · not reviewed: it is a private commercial directory that does not publish its admission criteria —it says who signed up, not who works— and no operator publishes who it holds a power contract with
How to cite this figure: Despegue (2026). Electric power and infrastructure for the basin · Neuquén. despegueargentina.com/en/neuquen/energia-generacion-boca-de-pozo-vaca-muerta · terms of use
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