In passing last week, in his usual matter-of-fact flat tone, the government’s Deputy Economy Minister for Energy & Mining, Daniel González, announced that a new study shows that Vaca Muerta has almost double the oil resources that the US Energy Information Administration had first estimated a decade and a half ago. The EIA had said 16.2 billion barrels of recoverable oil – the new estimate puts it at 30 billion barrels.

This is an inflation that the government loves. It means that, far from being dead, Vaca Muerta is still a project in its infancy. It is already changing the country’s macroeconomic equation, thanks to its massive exports, which are forecast to give the country an additional trade surplus of US$13.5 billion this year.

But the best is yet to come; the President who will most enjoy the benefits of the energy boom will likely be the one who takes office in the still-distant 2031, when oil production and exports will at least double and new liquefied natural gas projects will be fully operational.

Gonzalez said in his AmCham speech, where he broke the Vaca Muerta news, that the country must change its mindset: from fighting over scarcity to managing abundance. But a year away from the peak of the 2027 presidential race, the question that is increasingly making its way into the public debate is who will reap the benefits of this newly found bonanza.

For now, Milei has focused on boosting only one of the players in the abundance race: the companies. The RIGI investment programme is the most successful Milei administration policy: it has become a signature policy of his government and is encouraging major international investors to revisit their preconceptions of Argentina as an uninvestable place. A total of 43 large projects have been submitted, committing investments of almost US$200 billion over the next 30 years. Most of that money will only start to come in once (and if?) Milei wins re-election.

Other players close to the new abundant Argentina feel they have to fight for their share. The most obvious is the governor of Neuquén, Rolando Figueroa, who is sitting on most of that now-inflated oil wealth. According to a poll by the CB Global Data firm released this week, Figueroa is the country’s most popular governor. There is a good reason for that: Neuquén is one of only three provinces that are running net positive in job creation terms since Milei became president – 22 provinces are in the red and one is just even.

But even Figueroa believes he is not getting enough. Last week he detailed that the province only gets 13 percent of the value of every barrel that gets out of Neuquén’s underground stores: 30 percent is the cost of production, 30 percent is the companies’ earnings, the federal government takes 17 percent in taxes, and the rest of the country’s provinces get the remaining 10 percent via federal revenue-sharing rules. And still Neuquén, complained Governor Figueroa, has to pay for roads and other infrastructure that makes oil and gas production possible.

Neuquén, like the rest of Argentina’s provinces, is not receiving any funds for public works projects from the Milei federal government, which is obsessed with fiscal surplus. A province like La Pampa, north of Neuquén and with no Vaca Muerta rock on its territory, is threatening to charge a special toll on trucks running on its roads on their way to the oil territory. Peronist Governor Sergio Ziliotto claims that the trucks just ruin the roads and leave nothing behind for La Pampa.

Abundance is a nice problem to have, but it could be misleading. The abundance of some things may underscore the scarcity of others. In terms of policy, the success of the RIGI policy in terms of bringing Argentina back into the investor spotlight contrasts with the lack of policy for other, less investor-appealing economic issues. The most salient is that of household delinquency, which stands at a stubborn decades-long record, with people stuck between declining incomes that force them to seek loans for daily expenses and abusive interest rates from unregulated financial entities (not only banks but also digital wallets like Mercado Pago).

Milei is comfortable ignoring the day-to-day economic agenda of the public, which economists call the micro. But his inner circle – which now includes some pragmatists like Cabinet Chief Diego Santilli, whose only political mission in life is to stay in power – is increasingly wary that this trajectory will make the 2027 electoral year an uphill race. They know from experience that all the underground wealth in the world is meaningless if it does not reach the pockets of voters at the right time.