Billionaire Harold Hamm targets Argentina’s shale basin

Harold Hamm, the billionaire pioneer of the American shale boom, is launching a multibillion-dollar drilling campaign in Argentina, teaming up with the Swiss trading house Mercuria to expand into one of the world’s largest shale basins.

Hamm’s Continental Resources is buying a 50 percent stake in Phoenix Global Resources, a company controlled by Mercuria, the two sides said. The partners plan to quadruple the venture’s output to 100,000 barrels a day in the Vaca Muerta formation by 2031, and expect to invest about $4 billion over five years to make it one of the largest private producers in the basin. They did not disclose the price of the stake.

It is the third Argentine deal struck by the 80-year-old oil magnate since November, when Continental bought assets in the same basin from Pluspetrol. In January he acquired shale interests from Pan American Energy, a local producer part-owned by the oil major BP.

Hamm, an influential backer of President Donald Trump, has built close ties with Argentina’s libertarian leader Javier Milei, who has pursued sweeping deregulation and offered incentives for large oil and gas projects. “He’s done the right things. He’s got the right people in the right places,” Hamm said of Milei, adding that the president’s resolve gave investors the confidence to commit.

Milei’s overhaul has drawn a wave of interest from investors aligned with Trump’s movement. Elon Musk has praised the Argentine leader, and Peter Thiel moved his family to Buenos Aires earlier this year and met Milei in April. A hedge fund tied to Thiel recently bought a 1 percent stake in Vista, one of Argentina’s largest oil companies, according to a regulatory filing.

The reforms have revived an industry that had lost several international players, including ExxonMobil in 2024. New pipelines and potential gas export terminals are fueling a boom, with Argentine oil output forecast to reach a record 1 million barrels a day this month, up from 823,000 a year earlier, according to Rystad Energy.

Continental is also growing at home, acquiring Firebird Energy II, a Quantum Capital Group company producing about 32,000 barrels a day in the Permian Basin of Texas and New Mexico. The Continental-Mercuria venture will hold roughly 163,000 net acres across six blocks in Vaca Muerta, and the two are jointly building a natural gas power plant in West Texas.