From North Dakota to Texas and beyond, oil and gas companies have sharply reined in drilling and thousands of workers are being laid off. But here, where the oil and gas industry operates inside a government-made, subsidized bubble, taxpayers and drivers spend billions of dollars to try to keep that from happening. A barrel of oil fetches more than twice what it does in the U.S., and prices for natural gas can be nearly four times higher. That is helping shield producers and their workers developing the vast shale oil-and-gas deposits buried under a desolate swath of western Patagonia called Vaca Muerta, or Dead Cow, from the vagaries of world markets. Since taking office in December , Argentina’s president, Mauricio Macri, has been reversing the populist policies of his predecessor, Cristina Kirchner , undoing everything from currency controls to export taxes. But he is expanding the expensive programs […]