Pampa Energía - Rincón de Aranda

The resolution approving it does not approve and walk away: it requires accrediting, during the first and second year, an investment in computable assets equal to or above 20%, and reaching a floor of USD 2,000M before 1 July 2031, all under the supervision of the Energy Secretariat. On a project of USD 4,521M spread across three stages through 2041, each accreditation is recurring technical-accounting work -asset computation and valuation, documentary support, defence before the auditor- with a deadline written into the rule. It is not the same service as a supplier's registration agency: this sits on the RIGI holder's side, and today it is handled by Buenos Aires firms.

The 259 committed wells do not arrive at once: 50 through 2028, another 70 through 2031 and 139 through 2041. Each one carries its pad, its access road and its gathering pipelines, and each is negotiated with surface owners and local communities. It is continuous fieldwork over seventeen years -survey, measurement, agreement, compensation, registration- with the particularity that the final third concentrates 54% of the wells: whoever positions now serves demand that triples. No niche on the map quantifies it and there is no local supplier of the right size; notaries and generalist firms absorb it.

In the basin, more than 95% of flowback ends up in disposal wells instead of being recycled, and the five plants in Añelo that concentrate treatment received 1,022,290 m3 in 2023 -35.2% more than the previous year- operating at their limit. A development of 259 new wells pours volume onto a system that is already saturated. The water and waste niche measures TREATMENT and reuse; the other half of the problem has no owner: drilling, permitting and operating the disposal capacity that this volume will need, with the environmental permit as the real bottleneck.

The PEELP category commits the project to long-term exports, and the approved scope expressly includes treatment, storage and transport of the crude. Every volume crossing into export passes through fiscal metering and custody transfer: certified standards, traceable calibration and an independent third-party audit, because that number defines what is charged and what is taxed. Catamarca already has the niche measured for lithium; in Neuquén, with this project delivering into the export route, calibration is still resolved with laboratories from outside the province.