Alejandro Bulgheroni
His group combines oil and gas operations in four countries with a network of service stations, wind farms in Patagonia and an emerging commitment to lithium.
Alejandro Bulgheroni chairs Pan American Energy Group, the largest private integrated energy company in the region and the core of a conglomerate that his family built over more than seven decades. An industrial engineer trained at the University of Buenos Aires, he founded Pan American Energy and led it from its creation; today he heads the group’s holding companies while his nephew Marcos Bulgheroni manages executive operations as CEO.
Pan American Energy, the center of the business
PAE is the largest private oil company in Argentina, behind only the state-owned company YPF. Its most relevant asset is Cerro Dragón, one of the main hydrocarbon fields in South America, covering 3,500 km² and with more than 3,200 producing oil and gas wells. The company employs around 21,000 people and maintains a network of 735 service stations in the country.
The group’s corporate structure
Shareholding control is organized in layers. The family owns Bridas Energy Holdings, which holds 50% of Bridas Corporation; the other 50% belongs to the Chinese oil company CNOOC, which entered after a $3.1 billion transaction. That company, in turn, controls 40% of Pan American Energy, where the partner is the British company BP. The same alliance between the Bulgheroni family and CNOOC owns Axion Energy, one of the country’s three main fuel refining and marketing companies, alongside Shell and YPF. In December 2017, the shares of Pan American and Axion were contributed to Pan American Energy Group, the current integrated company that operates as a holding.
The commitment to renewables, lithium and electric fracturing
The energy business is distributed across conventional and unconventional reservoirs, both onshore and offshore, with operations in Argentina, Uruguay, Bolivia and Mexico. Added to that are renewable generation — with participation in the Vientos Patagónicos, Vientos Sudamericanos and Parque Eólico del Sur wind farms in Chubut — and lithium mining. In the United States, Bulgheroni chairs Beusa Holdings, active through EWS-Evolution Well Services in fracturing with fully electric equipment for unconventional oil and gas fields.
Olive groves, milk and land: the agribusiness branch
Diversification took the group far beyond hydrocarbons. In Uruguay, Bulgheroni went from an initial 50 hectares to becoming one of the country’s largest foreign investors. He developed a large-scale dairy business at the Estancias del Lago complex, olive oil production and high-technology agricultural and livestock projects that he shares with his wife, Bettina Guardia.
Awards and international forums
His career added several distinctions. Bulgheroni received an honorary doctorate from Universidad de Congreso, in Mendoza; the Enrique V. Iglesias Award for Ibero-American business development, presented by King Felipe VI of Spain; the Americas Society Gold Medal; the Gold Fortuna Entrepreneur Award; and recognition from the UBA for his career as part of the university’s bicentennial. UN Tourism appointed him Special Ambassador for Gastronomy Tourism for his work in Punta del Este, and the Latin American Business Council recognized him for his career in energy and agribusiness. He participated in the G20 Argentina 2018 and is part of the World Economic Forum’s chairpersons community. In the social sphere, he is vice president of Fundación Educando, a non-formal education NGO working in vulnerable areas of Argentina.
With day-to-day business operations in the hands of Marcos Bulgheroni, Alejandro retains the chairmanship of Bridas Energy Holdings and Pan American Energy Group, and guides the group toward unconventional reservoirs, wind energy and lithium, the three fields where its growth over the coming years is taking shape.
