How much the landowner is paid for a well

When an oil company occupies a field to explore, produce or transport hydrocarbons, it owes the landowner a scheduled compensation, and the schedule is set by the federal government. The structure comes from Decreto 861/96, in force in Mendoza, Neuquén, Río Negro, San Juan, San Luis and neighbouring areas: the unit of calculation is 25 km² on dry land (article 14) and one hectare on irrigated land (article 44), and on that unit four separate items are settled — surveillance and control costs as a basic monthly sum (article 18, Annex I), seismic surveying per kilometre of line and as a one-off (article 19, Annex II), and occupation with facilities as a monthly compensation that grows with the number of wells drilled per unit of surface and with the zone (article 20, scales of Annexes III to VI). A major facility on a unit with no wells is paid as well No. 1 of its zone (article 23). The amounts are updated by joint resolution of the Energy and Agriculture secretariats (article 42), and the latest one is Resolución Conjunta 2/2026: it raises the compensation as of 1 August 2025 — that is, retroactively — by 60.71% in Zone A, 90.36% in Zone B, 54.29% in Zone C and 54.40% in Zone D for easements and damages on dry land, and by 30.5% / 50.3% / 26.4% / 24.3% (and 30.5% on irrigated land) for surveillance and control costs. ⛔ And here is the limit that has to be said: not one norm in the chain publishes a peso figure. Each resolution updates by percentage over the previous one — 2/2026 over Conjunta 1/2024, and so on back to 1996 — and the tables of the annexes to Decreto 861/96 are not in the official text published online. With public sources you know the structure and the percentage, not the amount. verif · Feb 4, 2026 ↗

Decreto 861/96 has been in force since 1996 and its dry-land values apply from 1-Jan-1995 (article 43). The increase of Resolución Conjunta 2/2026 applies as of 1 August 2025, six months before it was published: whoever collected easements between that date and February 2026 did so at the old values. verif · Feb 6, 2026 ↗

The landowners — owners of the fields in Mendoza, Neuquén, Río Negro, La Pampa, San Juan and San Luis where drilling, production or transport takes place — who are the ones collecting, and the operators, who pay. The resolution itself orders notice to be given to the Cámara de Exploración y Producción de Hidrocarburos, to the Asociación Argentina de Propietarios y Superficiarios Afectados por la Explotación Hidrocarburífera, Minera y Eléctrica (AASEP) and to the six provinces. ⚠️ In Neuquén there is one more turn: when the land belongs to the provincial treasury, the one collecting is not a private party but the Fondo para la Conservación y Recuperación del Medio Ambiente Natural of Ley provincial 2183, under the procedure of Resolución 0012/21. verif · Feb 4, 2026 ↗