At the beginning of 2021, during an interview with EconoJournal, Horacio Turri was asked which gas pipeline needed to be built for Argentina to stop importing gas. Turri answered with a degree of precision that is slightly uncomfortable to read today.
He said the cheapest option, and the one that made the most technical sense, was the Tratayén–Salliqueló section. That it would release around 20 million cubic metres of gas per day during winter. Salliqueló–San Nicolás would come next, adding another 20 million. The advantage of the project was that it could be completed in two stages, without building the entire system at once. And that it would replace up to 40 million cubic metres of imported gas: supplies from Bolivia and the gas entering through regasification terminals.
That pipeline was built. It has another name, was inaugurated with great fanfare and is now called Perito Moreno. Turri described it section by section when it still existed only on paper.
During the same interview, he was asked about oil. He replied that Pampa had only one block with shale oil potential, that Total was its partner there, that they had drilled an exploratory well with good results and were waiting to complete the second. He said such a development was expensive and complex, and required an agreement among the partners. It was under consideration.
The block was called Rincón de Aranda.
Turri is an industrial engineer from ITBA, holds a master’s degree in Economics and Finance from the University of Buenos Aires and has led Pampa Energía’s oil and gas business since July 2016. He is 65 years old. He gives few interviews and, as the journalists who speak with him acknowledge, does not like talking about himself.
When he does, however, a story emerges that bears little resemblance to those of his peers.
Camiri
Turri graduated and left.
It was the late 1980s, and Schlumberger was visiting Argentine universities in search of young engineers willing to go anywhere. He was 23. He was assigned to Scotland, in the North Sea. Later, for personal reasons, he asked to be moved closer to Argentina: he was sent to Macaé, Brazil. From there he went to Camiri, a small town in the Bolivian jungle near Santa Cruz de la Sierra.
He spent a little over two years working as a field engineer, living at the foot of the drilling rig. He then decided to return to Buenos Aires and begin, in his own words, a quieter phase.
That phase lasted thirty years and eventually led him to head the largest hydrocarbon business Pampa had ever developed. But when he was asked what he would say today to a 24-year-old who was unsure whether to leave, Turri gave the same answer he gives his children, who are that age: some experiences can only be lived at a certain moment in life, people regret what they did not do, and afterwards they will have the rest of their lives to work behind a desk.
He said it while sitting, at that exact moment, behind a desk.
Gas is what he knows
Between Camiri and Pampa lie fifteen years that are rarely mentioned: power generation. He led Gener Argentina, managed Hidroeléctrica Piedra del Águila and headed Central Puerto between 2000 and 2008, enduring the collapse of convertibility and the freezing of tariffs. Throughout that period, he was a gas buyer. A customer.
That explains why, when he talks about the business, he does so in almost physical terms.
His argument against imports is one example. He does not appeal to politics or the trade balance: he appeals to geography. Producing gas from a well in Qatar, he said in 2021, transporting that molecule to a liquefaction plant, liquefying it, loading it onto a ship, crossing the Atlantic, unloading it in Escobar and regasifying it cannot be cheaper than producing gas in Neuquén and moving it one thousand kilometres through a pipeline to Buenos Aires. Argentina, he calculated, was importing between 1.5 and 2 billion dollars a year in alternative fuels.
He also has his own image for explaining why not all gas is equal, even though the molecule is identical. He calls them “bags of sugar”: the contents are the same, but what changes—and changes everything—is how much it costs to produce and extract them. That is why Pampa invested in tight gas at El Mangrullo, a field it acquired with Petrobras Argentina’s operations and which ended up delivering a surprise: today, almost 90% of its gas comes from the Agrio formation, a reservoir the previous company had barely explored and that Pampa’s team learned how to stimulate. Turri calls it, without hesitation, a star reservoir.
What changed
Five years after that interview, the conversation shifted.
The pipeline was built. Pampa is now negotiating an advance payment of close to 240 million dollars to secure capacity in its expansion, and Turri announced that the company will add 10 million cubic metres of gas production per day within three years.
But what had been under consideration moved to the centre of the table. Pampa acquired 100% of Rincón de Aranda in 2023—an area where there were not even any roads—and the block, which produced nothing two years ago, now pumps around 27,000 barrels per day. In June 2026, the Government approved its inclusion in the RIGI investment incentive regime: 4.521 billion dollars, the twentieth project admitted under the programme and the largest investment Pampa has ever made in a single asset. The target is a production plateau of 45,000 barrels per day in 2027.
That 2021 remark that it “requires a great deal of investment” turned out to be a fairly accurate description.
Outside the upstream business, Turri is vice-chairman of Transportadora de Gas del Sur, chairman of CIESA and vice-chairman of Compañía de Inversiones de Energía. He produces the gas and also sits at the table of the company that transports it. At Pampa, he shares the leadership with Marcelo Mindlin, Gustavo Mariani and Ricardo Torres.
There is something he said in 2021 that probably remains the best summary of his way of thinking: every year that passes without developing Vaca Muerta is a year lost, because what is not extracted today will be worth less tomorrow. He did not present it as a slogan. He framed it as an opportunity cost, which is how an engineer with a master’s degree in finance says, “hurry up.”
