Vaca Muerta's SMEs Want In on AI

By Enzo Dotto, Chief Public Affairs and Sustainability at Santex

I got back from Neuquén with my badge still in my backpack and one image I can't shake. During one of the week's presentations, YPF put up a map of Argentina with a number on each province: 525 in Neuquén, 370 in Mendoza, 259 in Santa Fe, 181 in Río Negro, 52 in Tierra del Fuego. Those are the local companies working for YPF today. Around 5,600 in total, and close to 90% of them are SMEs.

AOG Patagonia 2026 ran from October 19 to 22 in Neuquén, organized by the Argentine Oil and Gas Institute (IAPG). According to the event's closing figures, it drew more than 26,000 visitors and 590 exhibitors, with over 3,200 business meetings, a record for the show. It was four days of Oil & Gas at full scale, and what stayed with me most were the conversations with the people who keep this industry running every single day.

Every Number on That Map Is a Small Business

Behind every number on that map there are machine shops, trucking companies, valve manufacturers, people getting up before dawn in Plaza Huincul, Córdoba, or Chubut. The production outlook to 2030 we saw at the show means these Vaca Muerta SMEs are about to have more work than they've ever had.

This has nothing to do with party lines or who's in office. It matters to me because I've always believed the most valuable thing an industry can leave behind is decent work for people.

The topic made it onto the formal agenda too. During the week, YPF's chairman met with Neuquén's business chambers and committed to meeting with them every three months to walk through upcoming tenders. On the panels, SMEs raised financing, equipment, and one issue that came up in almost every session: skilled people.

Plenty of Interest in AI, Not Enough Support

That's where the question I brought home comes in: who will help them get ready for that scale?

Over four days walking the floor, hardly anyone was talking about artificial intelligence. Yet everyone I spoke with wanted to know how to put it to work in their own operation: in maintenance, in quoting, in the paperwork that piles up with day-to-day work. The appetite is there. What's missing is someone to walk alongside them.

Work Is Changing, and Reskilling Decides Who Gets On Board

AI is going to change everyone's job. The World Economic Forum's Future of Jobs Report 2025 estimates that by 2030, 170 million jobs will be created and 92 million displaced. The net result is positive, but it won't happen on its own.

What separates being left behind from getting on board is reskilling: learning to work with these tools without losing what makes us human. For an SME already racing to keep up with demand, that means training the people it already has instead of waiting to hire someone the market doesn't have yet.

What We Learned by Training Our Own Team

As Juan Santiago (CEO and Founder of Santex) and Walter Abrigo (Managing Director of Santex) say in countless meetings at Santex, AI without trained people is a vehicle with no driver. Its job is to free up time for the work that takes judgment, and people stay at the center of it.

That's why we started at home. In 2025, our voluntary AI reskilling program reached 92% of the company, and at our internal hackathon, 75% of the team built 35 AI solutions for real challenges. We share all of it, including what we still haven't figured out, in STX Pulse. As Juan put it there: "Everyone will have technology. The question isn't who has the best AI. It's who has the teams with the best critical thinking to use it. And you can't purchase that. You build it."

We bring that same approach to our clients: connecting data, systems, and processes, and supporting the people who use them every day. For a company without its own tech team, adding AI agents to the team can be a practical first step, as long as training comes with it.

Vaca Muerta's Growth Should Be Its People's Growth Too

Thank you to everyone who opened up their booth and shared their story with me this week. I'm coming home with a lot of open conversations and a firm belief that Vaca Muerta's growth has to be its people's growth too.

If you run an SME in the energy value chain and want to figure out where to start with AI, let's keep the conversation going.