Gustavo Mariani has led Pampa Energía since 2018 and took the company into oil production in Vaca Muerta with a record investment.
Gustavo Mariani is one of the four partners who founded Pampa Energía in 2005 and, since December 2018, has been the chief executive officer of Argentina’s largest integrated energy company. Born in Buenos Aires in 1970, an economist and Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA), he went from managing investment portfolios to leading a company that generates electricity, produces and transports gas and, in recent years, has moved fully into unconventional oil in Neuquén.
From Grupo EMES to the leadership of Pampa
Before energy, Mariani trained in finance. He joined Grupo EMES — the former Grupo Dolphin — in 1993 as an analyst, became managing partner and, between 2001 and 2003, served as chief financial officer of the group that controlled IRSA, Cresud and Alto Palermo. When that team turned toward energy assets, names that are now pillars of the sector ended up in its portfolio: Transener, Edenor and a series of thermal and hydroelectric power plants.
All of that was organized under Pampa Energía in November 2005. The company listed on the NYSE in 2009 and Mariani climbed through the structure: co-CEO until 2016, then executive vice president and chief executive officer from late 2018, when Marcelo Mindlin moved to focus on the chairmanship. As part of the control group, Mariani is both owner and chief executive, and he also serves as vice chairman of the board of TGS, the gas transporter co-controlled by Pampa.
The plan to stop importing energy
The axis of Mariani’s discourse is Argentina’s paradox: a country with enormous reserves that still imports energy. “Gas reserves for 300 years of consumption,” the CEO says, summarizing the local potential, and yet the country continues to buy liquefied gas and liquid fuels that could be replaced by domestic production at a fraction of the cost. The bottleneck, he insists, is infrastructure: there is not enough transport capacity to carry Neuquén gas to the consumption centers of Buenos Aires and the Litoral region.
That is why Pampa is pushing, through TGS, the expansion of the Perito Moreno gas pipeline, an investment of around US$700 million that, according to its estimates, would save between US$500 million and US$600 million a year in foreign currency. In oil, the company was part of Duplicar, the now-completed project that expanded crude evacuation capacity from Vaca Muerta to Bahía Blanca. Mariani supports the move toward contracts between private parties with less state intervention, although he admits that in gas the transition will be gradual while the Plan Gas remains in place, scheduled to run until the end of 2028.
The figures behind the expansion in Vaca Muerta
Pampa’s conversion into an oil company is backed by numbers. In 2025, the company committed nearly US$1.1 billion, most of it allocated to Rincón de Aranda, its unconventional field. The target set by Mariani is to reach 50,000 barrels per day by the end of 2026, with annual sales close to US$1.2 billion. To place that crude, Pampa is participating in the Vaca Muerta Sur pipeline, with capacity for 500,000 barrels per day to the San Matías Gulf, from where it will be exported.
The scale of the bet became clear in mid-2026, when the Government approved a US$4.521 billion RIGI for Pampa Energía to expand its production in Vaca Muerta, according to La Nación. It is one of the largest adhesions to the incentive regime and ties the company’s near future to the development of Neuquén shale. With that move, Mariani completed Pampa’s shift from the world of electricity and gas to the table where Argentina’s oil business for the coming years is being defined.
