Colonia Catriel, or simply Catriel, is a town in the northern tip of the
province
A province is an administrative division within a country or sovereign state, state. The term derives from the ancient Roman , which was the major territorial and administrative unit of the Roman Empire, Roman Empire's territorial possessions ou ...
of
Río Negro, Argentina,
Ministerio del Interior
near the border with La Pampa Province
La Pampa () is a sparsely populated province of Argentina, located in the Pampas in the center of the country. Neighboring provinces are from the north clockwise San Luis, Córdoba, Buenos Aires, Río Negro, Neuquén and Mendoza.
History
In ...
. It has a population of about 18,000, with postal code
A postal code (also known locally in various English-speaking countries throughout the world as a postcode, post code, PIN or ZIP Code) is a series of letters or numerical digit, digits or both, sometimes including spaces or punctuation, inclu ...
''8307'' and telephone prefix
A telephone prefix is the first set of digits after the country, and area codes of a telephone number. In the North American Numbering Plan countries (country code 1), it is the first three digits of a seven-digit local phone number, the second t ...
0299.
Catriel was named after Cacique
A cacique, sometimes spelled as cazique (; ; feminine form: ), was a tribal chieftain of the Taíno people, who were the Indigenous inhabitants of the Bahamas, the Greater Antilles, and the northern Lesser Antilles at the time of European cont ...
Catriel, a Native American who according to several stories participated in the defence of Argentine government interests against aborigines.
The town has a dry and temperate climate, with hot summers and winters which barely see snow. A characteristic dry strong wind is also common.
The main economic activity in and around the town is oil extraction, which started in 1959 and made the city grow fast, as state owned YPF
YPF S.A. (, formerly ; English: "Fiscal Oilfields") is a vertically integrated, majority state-owned Argentine energy company, engaged in oil and gas exploration and production, and the transportation, refining, and marketing of gas and pe ...
set extraction points nearby. However, nowadays the main oil company in the city is Petrobras
Petróleo Brasileiro S.A., better known by and Trade name, trading as the portmanteau Petrobras (), is a Brazilian state-owned enterprise, majority state-owned multinational corporation in the petroleum industry headquartered in Rio de Janeiro. ...
, which has made several investments in the city.
Transport
The town is served by the Colonia Catriel Airport .
References
Populated places in Río Negro Province
Populated places established in 1899
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