Oil Overtakes Corn and Soy Meal as Argentina’s Top Single Export

Rio Times · Argentina

Argentina has sold food to the world for more than a century, and it still does: farm goods are well over half of what it exports. But in the first six months of 2026 one barrel of crude earned the country more than any single crop – a first in the modern trade record.

And the pipeline built to carry most of that oil to the coast has not opened yet.

For decades Argentina has been known abroad as an agricultural giant. It still is.

But a quiet change under the Patagonian steppe has just rewritten one line of the country’s trade accounts. On 20 July 2026 the national statistics agency INDEC published its half-year foreign-trade report, the Intercambio Comercial Argentino.

Buried in the tables was a milestone: crude oil is now Argentina’s single biggest export product, ahead of corn and soybean meal. Crude has never before topped that table in the years INDEC’s product ranking covers.

The finding was compiled by the Instituto Argentina Grande from INDEC data.

Oil back on top of the export table

Between January and June 2026, Argentine crude oil exports reached US$4.693 billion. That gave oil a 9.5% share of all the goods the country sold abroad.

Corn came second on 8.4%, and soybean meal and pellets – the leader a year earlier – came third, also on 8.4%.

The two farm products are separated by almost nothing: US$4.171 billion of corn against US$4.161 billion of soybean meal. Both now sit just behind crude.

Oil’s climb was fast. The value of crude exports rose 47.7% against the same period a year earlier, an increase of US$1.516 billion. Total Argentine goods exports in the half came to US$49.454 billion, up 24.4% year on year, with volumes up 14.2% and average prices up 9.0%. The Rio Times reported those headline trade figures, and the record first-half surplus behind them, on 23 July. What is new is the ranking.

One product, not the whole economy

It is worth being precise about what changed, because the headline number is easy to over-read. Crude oil is the largest single product line. It is nowhere near the largest sector.

INDEC sorts exports into four broad groups. Processed farm goods accounted for 32.0% of the total and raw primary products for another 25.5% – together 57.5%, or US$28.45 billion.

Manufactured industrial goods came to 27.1%. Fuel and energy, the group crude oil sits in, was the smallest at 15.4%.

The soybean complex on its own, at US$8.844 billion, out-earned all of Argentina’s energy exports combined, which came to US$7.619 billion.

So Argentina has not stopped being a farming country. What has happened is that one product has climbed past every other single product, and it did so quickly.

Vaca Muerta, the shale under Patagonia

The force behind the change is Vaca Muerta, a shale rock formation centred on the western province of Neuquén and stretching into Río Negro, Mendoza and La Pampa. It holds large amounts of oil and gas trapped in tight rock.

Over the past decade, fracking has reached resources that older wells could not.

State-controlled oil company YPF has led the effort, alongside Argentine producers such as Pluspetrol, Vista Energy, Pampa Energía and Pan American Energy, and foreign majors including Chevron and Shell. Between them they have helped turn Argentina from a net energy importer, spending billions on foreign gas and fuel, into a growing crude exporter. INDEC puts the fuel-and-energy trade surplus at US$5.076 billion for the half, up 61.7%. The Rosario grains exchange, using a wider definition of energy, puts it at a record US$6.99 billion.

The pipeline that is not finished

Almost all of that was shipped through existing routes. The project meant to open the valve properly is VMOS, short for Vaca Muerta Oil Sur.

It runs from the town of Allen to a new export terminal at Punta Colorada on the Atlantic coast, costs about US$3 billion, and is owned by a consortium of nine led by YPF.

It is not running. The line was more than 70% built at the end of July 2026. YPF now says the first oil will flow at around 180,000 barrels a day at the end of this year or the start of 2027 – the same figure The Rio Times reported in June. The offshore buoys that tankers will tie up to still have to be connected and tested. YPF says capacity should reach 550,000 barrels a day in the third quarter of 2027, and that the line can be expanded beyond 700,000 from 2028 if production and demand justify it.

Added to the expanded network run by Oldelval, the company that has moved Vaca Muerta’s oil to the coast for decades, total capacity to get the crude out is expected to reach 1.3 million barrels a day.

The schedule also faces a challenge this newspaper reported in late July: UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee has asked Argentina to suspend work on the Punta Colorada terminal over its proximity to a protected Patagonian site.

Why the farm products made room

Corn and soybean meal did not collapse. Soybean meal exports rose 0.6% in value over the half, with prices up 3.0% and volumes down 2.4%.

Corn rose 6.6%. They grew; oil simply grew far faster, and passed them.

That matters for how exposed Argentina is. Farm exports swing with weather, crop disease and trade disputes.

Oil swings with a different set of risks: the price of a barrel, and whether infrastructure gets built on time. Having both is a form of insurance the country did not have a decade ago.

What the surplus could be worth

YPF’s chief executive, Horacio Marín, said in late May that the energy trade surplus could reach US$11 billion in 2026 if Brent crude – the international price benchmark – trades between US$80 and US$90 a barrel. Brent has swung hard all year.

Other estimates cluster below that. In July the consultancy Economía & Energía projected US$10.675 billion, from energy exports of US$14.704 billion against imports of just US$4.029 billion.

Independent energy consultant Daniel Gerold put the range at US$9.6 billion to US$11.1 billion. A Reuters poll of analysts back in February, before the year’s price swings, had suggested US$8.5 billion to US$10 billion.

They point the same way. For a country that has repeatedly run short of foreign currency, a dependable flow of export dollars from energy is a genuine change.

It does not fix everything, but it is a cushion Argentina lacked for decades.

What it means if you invest there or move there

A growing energy surplus helps rebuild the central bank’s reserves, which over time makes the peso steadier and abrupt currency controls less likely. That makes ordinary planning easier for anyone living on foreign savings or a foreign salary. Argentina’s inflation record still argues for caution, and our guide to the economy in 2026 sets out where prices, poverty and the peso actually stand.

For investors, the build-out around Vaca Muerta is a story still in progress. VMOS alone will need service companies, logistics and maintenance for years, and as volumes rise, ports, storage and transport have to grow with them.

The caution is that most of this rests on two things Argentina does not control: the price of a barrel, and whether the pipeline opens on schedule. Both forecasts and timetables in this industry slip.

The milestone in the June trade figures is real and already banked. The rest is a plan.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Argentina’s biggest export now?

Crude oil is the biggest single product. In the first half of 2026 it brought in US$4.693 billion, or 9.5% of all Argentine goods exports, ahead of corn and soybean meal, which were both at 8.4%.

By sector, though, farm goods still dominate: raw and processed agricultural products together made up 57.5% of exports.

Which product did oil overtake?

Soybean meal and pellets, which led the ranking in the first half of 2025 with US$4.137 billion. In the first half of 2026 it slipped to third at US$4.161 billion, behind corn at US$4.171 billion, because its export value rose only 0.6% while crude oil’s rose 47.7%.

When does the new Vaca Muerta pipeline start exporting?

The VMOS line to the Punta Colorada terminal is not running yet. It was more than 70% complete at the end of July 2026, and YPF says first oil should flow at roughly 180,000 barrels a day around the turn of the year, reaching 550,000 barrels a day in the third quarter of 2027.

UNESCO has asked Argentina to suspend work at the terminal, which could affect the timetable.

Sources: INDEC – Intercambio Comercial Argentino, first half 2026 (PDF), Rio Times – Argentina’s first-half trade surplus, Rio Times – the record energy surplus

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