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WELL SITE MAP — NEUQUÉN, ARGENTINA
Active oil
Natural gas
Mixed (oil+gas)
Forest cover
Type:
Output:
CO₂/year: Mt
Status:
Total CO₂ emissions
--
million tonnes / year
Forest cover (documented)
--
hectares, Neuquén province
Trees needed
--
to offset emissions
Planting required
--
trees, based on this model
TRY DIFFERENT SCENARIOS
Oil output (thousand bbl/day) 700
Gas output (million m³/day) 95
Active wells 4100
Trees you plant (millions) 0
EMISSIONS VS. ABSORPTION
CO₂ emissions
Absorption: existing + newly planted trees
0200 Mt CO₂
Loading analysis...
VACA MUERTA AREA
30,000 km²
Neuquén Basin — Latin America's largest shale formation
CO₂ PER BARREL
0.43 t/bbl
Upstream extraction, EPA/IPCC standard factor
CO₂ ABSORBED PER TREE
21 kg CO₂/yr
Adult tree, arid climate zone (150–300mm rain/yr)
WELL GROWTH RATE
+18%
Annual increase, unconventional wells, 2023–2025
Air quality outlook, 2026–2031. This projects how much CO₂ Vaca Muerta's currently active wells will add to the atmosphere over the next five years, and how many trees would be needed to offset it — assuming no new drilling beyond today's well count. It focuses only on carbon in the air, not on other environmental impacts.
PROJECTED YEAR
2026
☁️
Cumulative CO₂ in the air
Since current wells started producing
CO₂ added this year
—
CO₂ added, running total
—
Equivalent to cars on the road
—
RISING STEADILY
🌳
What it would take to offset it
Based on one adult tree = 21kg CO₂/year
Trees needed this year alone
—
Trees needed, cumulative
—
That's roughly this many soccer fields of forest
—
LARGE-SCALE EFFORT
📉
The gap, in simple terms
Compared to documented forest cover in Neuquén
Documented forested hectares
109,237 ha
Share of emissions those forests could absorb
—
In plain words
—
FALLS SHORT
PROJECTED CO₂ ADDED PER YEAR
Based on current well output (2025 baseline) held flat with no new drilling. In practice, Vaca Muerta's well count has been growing quickly — see the sources below for what that growth has looked like historically. This chart only asks: "if nothing changes from here, what does the CO₂ math look like?"
SOURCES
    This is an independent educational model, not an official report from any government body or company. Where official or peer-reviewed figures exist, we used them directly. Where no public figure exists (for example, an exact tree count for the province), we say so plainly instead of presenting a guess as fact.