YPF, Argentina's state-controlled oil and gas company, has closed the third and final leg of a back-to-back transaction with Vista Energy, an independent Vaca Muerta-focused producer, and Equinor, the Norwegian energy major — lifting its stake in the Bandurria Sur block to 44.9% and in Bajo del Toro and Bajo del Toro Norte to 65%, all three blocks already under YPF operation.
The closing, reported to Argentina's National Securities Commission (CNV) on Thursday, completes the equity consolidation phase of YPF's Plan 4x4 — the company's strategic blueprint to quadruple production and reserves by 2030 — and locks in operated control over a tier-1 footprint in the heart of the Vaca Muerta shale formation, in Argentina's Neuquén Basin. The next phase, as president and CEO Horacio Marín told investors in February, is field execution.
Whether the consolidated footprint translates into the production curve YPF has staked the Plan 4x4 on will depend on factors the closing alone cannot resolve — among them the pace of well licensing, the capital cycle for new pads, and the timing of midstream capacity additions that determine how many barrels can actually be evacuated to export markets.
YPF paid $163.175 million plus a $41 million closing adjustment that includes cash, working capital and other items at the company level. The transaction had been agreed on February 2 and spent three months in regulatory and corporate approvals. The three blocks remain under YPF operation.
After the closing, YPF holds a 44.9% interest in Bandurria Sur — a 40% direct stake plus a 16.3% participation in Bandurria Sur Participaciones S.A. (formerly Equinor Argentina S.A.U.), which itself holds 30% of the block — and 65% of Bajo del Toro and Bajo del Toro Norte combined.
The Triangular Mechanics
The closing completes an unusual back-to-back corporate architecture: a transaction agreed by all three parties on the same day. On February 2, Vista announced to the Mexican Stock Exchange the purchase from Equinor of 100% of Equinor Argentina S.A.U. — holder of 30% of Bandurria Sur — and a 50% direct stake in Bajo del Toro and Bajo del Toro Norte.
Equinor's official statement valued the total transaction at $1.1 billion, with an upfront $550 million cash payment plus shares in Vista and contingent payments tied to production and oil prices over a five-year period, with an effective date of July 1, 2025. "We are realising value from two high-quality assets we have actively developed as we continue to high-grade our international portfolio," Philippe Mathieu, Equinor's executive vice president for Exploration & Production International, said in the announcement, framing the divestment as a portfolio high-grading.
In the same act, Vista ceded 16.3% of the newly acquired entity — rebranded Bandurria Sur Participaciones S.A. — and a 15% direct stake in Bajo del Toro and Bajo del Toro Norte to YPF for the $163.175 million YPF paid. The arithmetic of the indirect cession yields a 4.9% additional exposure for YPF (16.3% × 30% = 4.89%), which on top of its existing 40% direct stake brings the total to 44.9%. Vista, which paid Equinor's full bill, reduced its net accounting outflow to the $712 million headline figure by simultaneously pocketing the YPF cession. Vista is left with a 25.1% indirect interest in Bandurria Sur and a 35% direct stake in Bajo del Toro.
Closing was conditioned on two suspensive conditions: a waiver by Shell Argentina, the Anglo-Dutch major's local subsidiary, of its right of preference over the 30% it holds in Bandurria Sur — notified on February 19 — and approval from Chile's antitrust authority, given that both Equinor Argentina and Vista hold crude export commitments to that market.
Q1 2026 Operating Data: Bandurria Sur Goes 100% Shale, Bajo del Toro Norte Up 50%
The CNV filing adds a data point absent from the February announcement: per-block production for the first quarter of 2026.
Bandurria Sur produced 82,300 barrels of oil equivalent per day (boe/d) on a 100% basis, all of it shale oil. The figure marks a meaningful migration in the block's hydrocarbon mix from the third quarter of 2025, when output stood at 84,900 boe/d with 79% shale. YPF concentrated the block's production fully on the Vaca Muerta formation, leaving behind the residual contribution of older conventional wells.
That migration is consistent with the dynamics of recent pads in Vaca Muerta's oil window, where the share of older vertical conventional wells dilutes through the ramp-up of long horizontal laterals. The relevant metric for tracking the block is no longer aggregate volume but the net oil-cut and the decline curve of the producing well inventory — which determines how many new locations are required to sustain 82,000 boe/d in a formation with first-year type decline rates of 30%–40%.
Bajo del Toro Norte, meanwhile, reached 5,400 boe/d in the first quarter, also 100% shale oil — a 50% increase from the 3,600 boe/d reported in the third quarter of 2025. The block's Unconventional Development Concession (CENCH) was granted in 2021 for a 35-year term, covers 28,100 acres, and runs until November 16, 2056. Bajo del Toro proper, with 10,600 acres, remains under an unconventional exploration permit expiring December 31, 2026, with a contractual option to convert to a CENCH for 35 years under existing legislation.
Bandurria Sur has held CENCH status since 2015 with a 2050 expiration. The block had 195 producing wells as of September 30, 2025, and registered proven (P1) reserves of 181 million barrels of oil equivalent at year-end 2024 on a 100% basis, according to filings with Argentina's Secretariat of Energy.
Plan 4x4 Enters Execution Phase
The closing also has a strategic reading.
The transaction completes the equity consolidation phase of YPF's Plan 4x4 over tier-1 unconventional assets, a week after the closing of Pluspetrol's cession in the Hub Sur cluster — comprising the Meseta Buena Esperanza, Aguada Villanueva and Las Tacanas blocks — reported on April 30. In both cases, YPF moved to majority equity positions in blocks it already operated, eliminating minority partners that lacked the appetite or capital cycle to keep up with the pace of pad-mode development.
The Plan 4x4 roadmap, presented to investors by Marín on February 27, commits $6 billion of capex for 2026, with 70% allocated to Vaca Muerta and a year-end target of 215,000 barrels per day of own shale production.
The consolidated equity position enables YPF to submit individual blocks to the RIGI — Argentina's Large Investment Incentive Regime — through Single Project Vehicles. That decision remains open for Bajo del Toro.
Evacuation capacity is the second axis. The Vaca Muerta Oil Sur (VMOS) pipeline, scheduled to come online late in 2026 with an initial capacity of 180,000 bbl/d, conditions sustained ramp-up toward Argentina's Atlantic ports, while the Oldelval system — operator of the main Vaca Muerta crude trunk line to the Atlantic seaboard — has already cleared the route to Pacific export markets with 540,000 bbl/d of capacity following completion of the Duplicar expansion.
Across that infrastructure, the feedstock for the Argentina LNG project — which YPF is structuring with Eni, the Italian energy company, and XRG, ADNOC's international investment arm, with a final investment decision (FID) expected in the second half of 2026 — requires exactly this class of operated block at 60%-or-more equity to sustain the production curve.