For decades, Bolivia has been one of South America’s biggest natural gas exporters. The country’s abundant gas reserves began being pumped in earnest in the 1970s and solidified the rise of popular former President Evo Morales, who dramatically increased state control over the industry after taking office in 2006 and used revenues to expand Bolivia’s welfare state.

But Bolivia’s gas exports have declined over the past decade—in part because a heavy state hand stifled new investment in the sector. Furthermore, due to what economic analysts have called poor government planning, alternative exports have not grown at a pace that can recoup the loss. The slump has strained Bolivia’s economy, limited the government’s spending options, and triggered worry in its customer countries, such as Argentina and Brazil.

Now, South America’s energy map appears to be shifting. Argentina is positioning itself to move into some of the space that Bolivia is losing—and could reap political and economic rewards in the process. Even as both countries attract geopolitical attention and investment for their ample lithium reserves—and potential to supply the global green energy transition—Argentina’s and Bolivia’s diverging natural gas fates show that we’re still living in an era of fossil fuel politics.

With uncharacteristic speed, the government in Buenos Aires on Sunday inaugurated a pipeline connecting a massive shale gas deposit in central-western Argentina to consumers in the province of Buenos Aires, which relies on imported liquefied natural gas from abroad for part of the year. The government said it expects the pipeline from the oil and gas field—named Vaca Muerta, or Dead Cow—to save Argentina $1.7 billion in imports this year. Argentina has pumped oil from Vaca Muerta since 2011.

The project’s quick construction was unusual because Argentina is experiencing a biting economic crisis, with annual inflation at more than 110 percent. The pipeline, which had been planned since 2015, was constructed over 10 months, beginning in September.

A key factor that helped accelerate the project, Argentine energy journalist Nicolás Gandini told Foreign Policy, was the arrival of a new economy minister last July who prioritized the pipeline and was “seen as a legitimate interlocutor by the private energy sector”—a critical attribute amid the country’s macroeconomic woes. The pipeline was built via a partnership between state energy company Energía Argentina and three private firms; the minister put together a mix of funding sources that included credit from Latin American development bank CAF.

That finance minister, Sergio Massa, is the ruling left-wing coalition’s presidential candidate in this October’s elections. (Incumbent President Alberto Fernández has declined to seek reelection.) Polls suggest a difficult race for Massa, but if he performs well, his record on natural gas may be part of the reason why. Though drilling and fracking at Vaca Muerta has sparked environmental and Indigenous protests in Argentina over the years, no major presidential candidate today opposes those activities.

In addition to Massa, front-runners in October’s election include anarcho-capitalist candidate Javier Milei and the center-right opposition coalition’s Horacio Rodríguez Larreta and Patricia Bullrich, who will face off in an opposition primary next month.

Gandini, who is the director of energy and mining news agency EconoJournal and has been tracking the energy advisors working with Argentina’s leading presidential candidates, said that Milei and Bullrich are more opposed to state involvement in the economy than Massa and Larreta. He added that while Larreta is more pro-market than Massa, Larreta would likely be open to mobilizing government resources if necessary in order to move gas investments forward.

Bullrich and Milei “have the illusion that they can get projects financed on the private market, which is not so simple in a country as complicated as Argentina,” Gandini said.

Buenos Aires will open an auction for a state contract to build a new extension of the pipeline to another province this September—just one month before the election—and has ambitions to export gas to Brazil and Uruguay in the future. Argentina’s gas export potential has even attracted the attention of German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who discussed the matter on a bilateral visit in January. (Argentina’s Congress is in the early stages of discussing a regulatory framework that could allow it to start exporting liquified natural gas.) Even before any exporting occurs, reducing gas imports helps the Argentine government conserve something it badly needs: dollars.

But gas exports cannot be Argentina’s economic lifeline forever as the global energy transition advances. Neighboring Bolivia serves as a cautionary tale of what can happen when a country fails to plan for an economic future beyond fossil fuel exports. The same week Argentina’s new pipeline was completed, its government released its energy transition strategy for 2030, which focuses on how the country will transform its electric grid but not how it will transform its exports.

For a country in such economic uncertainty, however, 2030 feels a long way off. “Right now, the government needs to improve its trade balance,” and other national accounts, “which requires it to export as much as possible—not just natural gas, but above all, oil,” especially at the current international prices, Gandini said.