2025 was a year of growth for activity in Vaca Muerta. The start-up in April of Oldelval’s Duplicar oil pipeline expanded crude transport capacity from Vaca Muerta to Puerto Rosales by about 226,000 barrels per day.
An international price that, although it fell to the $60 range, remains competitive for unconventional production, combined with the new pipeline, boosted activity and output this year.
Vaca Muerta reached production of 569,000 barrels per day in October, pushing national crude output to a historic record. For the play, that represented a 35% year-over-year increase compared with October 2024. As a result, activity measured in frac stages also grew 36%, totaling 20,233 fractures between January and October 2025, up from 14,877 in the same period of 2024.
In gas, Vaca Muerta’s production reached 65 million cubic meters per day in October, a volume only slightly above last year’s. The lack of new transport infrastructure basically limits production expansion, following the jump provided by the start-up of the first phase of the Néstor Kirchner gas pipeline, also known as Perito Moreno.
To analyze the outlook, it is necessary to consider that both gas and oil from Vaca Muerta require, among other conditions for the development of their production, an increase in transport capacity through new pipelines that connect this productive region to demand centers.
In this regard, for crude, the production growth in 2025 is already using 66% of the new Duplicar pipeline, with a rising pace expected to reach full capacity over the next six months. At the same time, a consortium led by YPF is building another pipeline called Vaca Muerta Sur, which will reach Punta Colorada, have an initial capacity of 550,000 barrels per day, and is scheduled to begin operations in the last quarter of 2026.
Once the transport infrastructure constraint is cleared, the analysis must focus on the international price and the country’s macroeconomic variables, especially the value of the dollar. Well-known industry analysts and the U.S. Energy Information Administration forecast a decrease in crude demand alongside simultaneous growth in production, which would produce a downward path for the international price, placing it around $55 per barrel next year.
Although that level remains competitive for Vaca Muerta crude, a dollar that continues to lose ground against rising peso-denominated costs could lead some projects to be reconsidered. In gas, the start-up of the LNG project led by PAE toward the end of next year will only boost Vaca Muerta production by about 4 million cubic meters per day during the summer season, representing an increase of 6%, which will be used to offset offshore gas from the south that will be used in that project.
YPF’s LNG projects still lack a final investment decision and will require a pipeline dedicated exclusively to transporting new Vaca Muerta production to Punta Colorada — a pipeline whose construction should go hand-in-hand with a firm decision to execute the LNG project. In this case, the production impact will also depend on the price assigned to gas at the wellhead.