Those problems start at the crack of dawn every day in the regional capital of Neuquén as 30,000 people try to reach the shale hub of Añelo 50 miles away. It is a lethal Mad Max parade along a two-way road, full of craters, carrying hundreds of trucks skidding on and off the dirt verge. Many are loaded with specialist silica sand, the lifeblood of the fracking industry. There are too few trailers in Añelo to lodge the workers, so if you want to join the shale rush you take your chance. Each well at Vaca Muerta needs some 15,000 tonnes of sand, 400 trucks of water, and a constant supply of diesel. Previous governments talked of upgrading the Norpatagónico railway to put an end to this daily ritual but the plans were overtaken by one debt crisis after another. The aqueduct bringing in water for the drilling rigs never got off the ground.
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