Mark Jones
Rice University
Houston
In sharp contrast to the Argentine national government, where political leadership and policies have been quite volatile over the course of the past two decades, during this same time period the Neuquén provincial government leadership has been a familiar and reliable partner for the oil and natural gas industry in Argentina’s Vaca Muerta. This status quo could soon be disrupted by the most competitive Neuquén gubernatorial race in memory.
The Vaca Muerta is centered in the province of Neuquén which has allowed the province to become Argentina’s unrivalled producer of natural gas (63% of Argentine production) and petroleum (50% of Argentine production).
On Apr. 16 Neuquén’s 546,000 voters will choose between three viable gubernatorial candidates. If victorious, one of these candidates (Marcos Koopmann) is near-certain to maintain the provincial status quo to which companies operating in the Vaca Muerta have become accustomed over the past two decades. Victory by either of the other two viable candidates (Rolo Figueroa and Ramón Rioseco) could potentially alter this status quo in significant ways, and in doing so generate considerable uncertainty regarding investments and operations in the Vaca Muerta.
In Argentina provincial governors play a prominent role in regulating and facilitating the operations of the oil and natural gas industry within their province’s boundaries. The Neuquén governor is elected by a plurality vote while the unicameral provincial legislature is elected concurrently from a single province-wide district using proportional representation. Neuquén allows fusion candidacies through which more than one party or alliance can nominate the same gubernatorial candidate, with all votes for that candidate from the multiple nominations summed together for the purpose of determining the winner. Six candidates are running for governor and more than two dozen parties/alliances are competing in the concurrent provincial legislative elections, with all simultaneously supporting one of the six gubernatorial candidates.
The Movimiento Popular Neuquino (MPN) has won every gubernatorial election held in Neuquén over the past 60 years, and since the transition to democracy in 1983 has won 10 straight gubernatorial elections. With current two-term governor Omar Gutiérrez (2015-23) term-limited, the two leading figures within the MPN, Gutiérrez and former governor Jorge Sapag (2007-15), selected lieutenant governor Marcos Koopmann to be the MPN’s gubernatorial candidate. Ten distinct party/alliance provincial legislative lists (of legislative candidates) have Koopman as their gubernatorial candidate, including the MPN’s official list headed by Daniela Rucci (daughter of Marcelo Rucci, Secretary General of the Oil Workers Union) and a list headed by Martín Pereyra (the son of Guillermo Pereyra, who served as the Secretary General of the Oil Workers Union for more than 30 years).
The strongest challenger to Koopmann is national deputy Rolando “Rolo” Figueroa, a former member of the MPN who served as Gutierréz’s lieutenant governor during his first term (2015-19) and has been a national deputy since 2021. Figueroa is the candidate of nine lists, including two lists of parties belonging to the national Juntos por el Cambio (JxC) coalition (which governed Argentina from 2015 to 2019 and represents the principal opposition to the Frente de Todos government of President Alberto Fernández), Propuesta Federal (PRO) of former president Mauricio Macri and Nuevo Compromiso Neuquino.
The third competitive candidate is Ramón Rioseco of the Frente de Todos Neuquino alliance who was also the Peronist gubernatorial candidate in 2019 and in 2015, when he finished second (14% and 9% behind Gutiérrez respectively). Rioseco is the candidate of five distinct parties/alliances.
National deputy Pablo Cervi of the Unión Cívica Radical is the candidate of the portion of the JxC alliance not supporting Figueroa, Carlos Eguía (Cumplir) is the candidate of Libertarian presidential candidate Javier Milei, and Patricia Jure is the candidate of the far left Frente de Izquierda-Unidad. All three are each destined to win only a single-digit share of the vote.
The shale revolution in Neuquén’s Vaca Muerta has taken place entirely under the leadership of Jorge Sapag and Omar Gutiérrez. Koopmann is the clear candidate of continuity, and if he is victorious international and Argentine oil and gas companies operating in the Vaca Muerta should expect a maintenance of the status quo of the past 16 years in regard to their interaction with and regulation by the Neuquén provincial government.
A Figueroa victory would at least in the short term alter the status quo to which companies with investments or operations in the Vaca Muerta have become accustomed over the past 16 years. And, at the minimum, a Figueroa victory would result in a relatively widespread change in the specific provincial officials these companies have been interacting with in recent years.
Finally, if Koopmann and Figueroa split the traditional MPN vote relatively equally, it would in theory be possible for Rioseco to achieve a narrow victory. And, a Rioseco victory would, much more than a Figueroa victory, have the potential to dramatically alter the status quo for oil and natural gas operations in the Vaca Muerta.
The Author
Mark P. Jones is the Joseph D. Jamail Chair in Latin American Studies, the Director of the Center for Energy Studies’ Argentina Program, and the Political Science Fellow at Rice University’s James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy. He has conducted research and served as a consultant in Argentina for more than 30 years and has written more than a hundred articles and chapters on Argentine economics, energy, government, politics, and society.