American billionaires are ramping up bets on Argentina’s Vaca Muerta shale basin, with US oil magnate Harold Hamm and Palantir co-founder Peter Thiel emerging as the latest high-profile investors targeting the formation, according to a report by Oilprice.com.
Continental Resources‘ $4-billion Argentina push
Hamm’s Continental Resources has agreed to acquire a 50% stake in Phoenix Global Resources, forming an equal joint venture with Swiss commodities trader Mercuria Energy Group, as the two sides confirmed to news outlets. The partners plan to roughly quadruple the venture’s output to 100,000 barrels a day in the Vaca Muerta formation by 2031, with about $4 billion in planned investment over five years.
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The new partnership between Continental, Mercuria and Phoenix will bring together 163,000 net acres spread across six blocks in the Neuquén basin, with the stated goal of taking current output of just over 28,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day past 100,000 within five years.
The joint platform will combine Phoenix’s assets in Mata Mora Norte, Mata Mora Sur, Confluencia Norte and Confluencia Sur, Continental’s existing stake in Los Toldos II Oeste, and an additional portion of the Bajo del Toro Este block held by Integra, the investment platform of businessman José Luis Manzano. The deal is still subject to definitive agreements and regulatory approvals.
This marks the third Argentine deal by the 80-year-old oil magnate since November, when Continental first bought assets in the same basin from Pluspetrol. Both companies are already partners in the Pecos Power Plant, a 452-megawatt natural gas-fired facility under development in West Texas.
Phoenix CEO Pablo Bizzotto said Continental’s entry as an operating partner alongside Mercuria brings decades of unconventional resource development experience that will strengthen the platform’s capabilities as it enters this growth phase, paraphrasing his comments cited in Infobae’s report on the deal.
Thiel’s bet on Vista Energy
Earlier this month, Thiel’s hedge fund Thiel Macro LLC disclosed a roughly 1% stake in Vista Energy, one of Vaca Muerta’s leading shale producers, worth about $76 million, according to a US Securities and Exchange Commission filing cited by Reuters and Bloomberg.
The purchase, made in the form of American depositary shares, came four months after a meeting between Thiel and Argentina’s President Javier Milei. Bloomberg reported that Vista is the only non-US company in Thiel Macro’s portfolio, and that the position was surpassed in size only by the fund’s holding in Amazon.com. Vista’s shares rose 5.6% in New York trading following news of the investment, touching their highest level in two months.
Vista produces about 160,000 barrels of oil equivalent daily in Vaca Muerta, with cumulative investment in the formation exceeding $6.5 billion to date. The company also holds a stake in Argentina’s flagship shale oil export project, VMOS, a pipeline and port facility that is under construction and expected to begin operations next year.
Why the basin is drawing capital
Under Milei, Argentina has removed controls on oil prices and exports and regained access to global financial markets, which has helped jump-start growth in Vaca Muerta, where combined crude and natural gas production has already surpassed 1 million barrels per day.
Continental CEO Doug Lawler has credited Milei’s economic reforms with helping create the conditions for the company’s latest investment, the company said.
Crude oil output from the formation hit an all-time high of 887,227 barrels per day in May, up 19% from a year earlier, while natural gas output climbed to 5.5 billion cubic feet a day, just shy of the record set in July 2025. The growth has helped Argentina overtake Colombia to become Latin America’s fourth-largest oil producer, industry reports have noted.
Argentina has also revised its estimate of technically recoverable oil resources in Vaca Muerta sharply higher, to 30.17 billion barrels — 89% above a 2013 estimate — underscoring the scale of the opportunity that has drawn US supermajors and independents alike, including Chevron, into the basin.
For Hamm, the pioneer of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing in US shale, the bet is a familiar one: Continental is now looking to apply that playbook to a basin that industry watchers rank as one of the largest shale plays in the world outside the US.
