Billionaire Peter Thiel buys $76 million Argentine oil stake

Peter Thiel has bought about 1 percent of Vista Energy, one of the largest oil producers in Argentina’s Vaca Muerta shale formation, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission published Friday.

Thiel Macro LLC, the billionaire’s hedge fund, acquired roughly 1.2 million American depositary shares worth about $76 million. Vista trades in New York under the ticker VIST.

The purchase comes four months after Thiel met President Javier Milei at the presidential palace in Buenos Aires. Milei told a local outlet afterwards that they had discussed economic policy and their shared opposition to wealth taxes. Local media have reported that Thiel recently bought a mansion in an upmarket neighbourhood of the city.

Vista produces 160,000 barrels of oil equivalent a day and has invested more than $6.5 billion in Argentina. It raised its investment and production outlook for Vaca Muerta in May.

The formation sits in Neuquén province in Patagonia and covers an area roughly the size of Belgium. It holds the world’s second-largest shale gas reserves and its fourth-largest shale oil reserves, and Argentina has built its plans to expand energy production and exports around it.

Thiel Macro declared a portfolio worth $418.7 million. Its other holdings run heavily to power generation, including Vistra, American Electric Power, DTE Energy, FirstEnergy, CMS Energy and the nuclear reactor developer X-energy, alongside a position in Amazon.

That concentration points to a bet on electricity demand rather than on oil alone. Milei has said he wants to use Patagonia’s open land and cold climate to attract data centre projects, which require large and continuous power supply. Similar developments have drawn opposition elsewhere in Latin America over their water and energy consumption.

Thiel co-founded PayPal and Palantir Technologies, where he serves as chairman, and was the first outside investor in Facebook. He has become one of the more politically active figures in American venture capital, funding candidates aligned with his views on regulation and taxation.

Milei, a self-described anarcho-capitalist elected in 2023, has cut public spending sharply, deregulated large parts of the Argentine economy and courted foreign investors on the argument that the country’s energy reserves are underexploited. Vaca Muerta output has risen steadily under his administration, and Argentina has moved toward becoming a net energy exporter.