J&F — the Brazilian conglomerate controlled by the Batista family — has filed two applications with Argentina's Secretariat of Energy to export gas from its Neuquén production directly to its own thermal power plant in Brazil, a structure that would mark the first case of fully integrated cross-border vertical integration in the Argentina–Brazil gas corridor if approved.
According to Shale24, the filings were submitted through Fluxus, J&F's Latin American upstream arm. Each application authorizes up to 1 million m³/day on a distinct route: one crosses Bolivia and connects with the pipeline system serving southern Brazil; the other runs directly through the Paso de los Libres–Uruguaiana corridor into Rio Grande do Sul, where Âmbar Energia — also part of J&F — operates a gas-fired thermal plant.
Whether both routes prove commercially operable rests on variables the regulator's decision will not resolve alone. The Bolivia option depends on available transit capacity in a system constrained by Bolivia's sharp decline in domestic gas production over the past decade; the Uruguaiana option depends on procurement approvals and dispatch logic on the Brazilian side. The market tracks both independently.
The self-import mechanism and the integration logic
The Brazilian instrument J&F is seeking to activate is autoimportação — self-import — a regulatory mechanism that allows a large industrial consumer to import gas directly for its own use, bypassing distributors and marketers. Applied here, the molecule Fluxus extracts in Neuquén does not hit the market: it flows straight to J&F's own generation plant in Brazil. The circuit eliminates intermediaries by design.
The logic has precedent inside the group. Enegas, J&F's gas-trading arm, was among the first companies to export Argentine gas to Brazil and already buys volumes from local producers for resale into the Brazilian market. Self-import via Fluxus is the next layer: no longer buying third-party molecules, but sending its own.
Centenario operations
Fluxus acquired the Centenario field in August 2025, when Neuquén province formally authorized the transfer of three blocks — Centenario I, Centenario II and Centenario Centro — from Pluspetrol, an Argentine independent oil and gas producer. At the point of transfer, Fluxus's share of those areas produced 1.3 million m³/day of gas.
The company committed to reactivating 54 wells between 2026 and 2027 with an initial investment of $21.3 million, and to refurbishing the Turboexpander unit at Centenario Centro to process liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) locally.
Of the two declared routes, the one to Uruguaiana carries the more direct geographic logic: the corridor connects physically to Âmbar's thermal plant, part of one of Brazil's three largest gas-fired generation portfolios. The Bolivia route, by contrast, faces a structural question — Bolivia sharply cut its gas output over the past decade, and the effective transit capacity of the system that links to southern Brazil is a variable the market watches closely.
Both applications remain pending at the Secretariat of Energy. If the regulator clears them — in full or in part — the case would stand as the first complete cross-border vertical integration in the Argentina–Brazil corridor: a group that produces gas in Vaca Muerta, moves it through regional infrastructure, and burns it in its own power plant across the border, without the molecule touching any third-party market in between.
Ricardo Savini, Fluxus CEO, had described the structure as "a proxy for energy integration" between the two countries when he spoke in Bariloche in June 2025. What remains pending is whether that model clears regulatory approval in Buenos Aires with gas J&F itself produces.
The Batistas and the J&F empire
Wesley and Joesley Batista inherited a butcher shop their father opened in Anápolis, Goiás, in 1953. Seven decades later, that storefront is JBS, the world's largest animal-protein processor. The initials J&F refer to founder José Batista Sobrinho and his wife Flora; the brothers run the holding company from São Paulo.
JBS is only the spine. The group also owns pulp producer Eldorado Brasil, J&F Mineração in mining, Flora Higiene e Cosméticos in consumer goods, digital-payments company PicPay, Banco Original in banking, Canal Rural in media, and Âmbar Energia in power generation and trading. Total scale is roughly $63 billion in assets and $80 billion in annual revenue, across more than 190 countries and close to 300,000 employees. Energy is a newer line but a rapidly expanding one: Âmbar ranks as Brazil's fourth-largest gas-fired generator by installed capacity, with thermal plants in Cuiabá and Uruguaiana, a 645-kilometer gas pipeline network between Bolivia and Brazil, and a portfolio spanning thermal, hydro, solar, wind, biomass and biogas.
The upstream push is more recent. In December 2023, J&F bought Fluxus — the company Ricardo Savini, Jorge Lorenzón and Vitor Abreu, all former 3R Petroleum executives, had founded earlier that year. The deal closed in parallel with an agreement with Pluspetrol covering the Centenario blocks and a 33% stake in the Ramos field in Salta. That Salta leg never closed: Tecpetrol, the Techint Group's exploration and production subsidiary, exercised its right of preference. With Centenario now operational and the two export applications filed, J&F lines up under a single corporate roof what had previously depended on third parties: wells in Neuquén, regional pipeline, thermal plant in Rio Grande do Sul. The same molecule crosses every unit of the group without changing hands.