Colonia Catriel, or simply Catriel, is a town in the northern tip of the

province A province is almost always an administrative division within a country or state. The term derives from the ancient Roman '' provincia'', which was the major territorial and administrative unit of the Roman Empire's territorial possessions ou ...

of Río Negro, Argentina,Ministerio del Interior
near the border with La Pampa Province. 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 digits or both, sometimes including spaces or punctuation, included in a postal a ...

''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 +# ), it is the first three digits of a seven-digit phone number, 3-3-4 scheme. In ...

0299. Catriel was named after Cacique 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 petr ...

set extraction points nearby. However, nowadays the main oil company in the city is Petrobras, which has made several investments in the city.

Transport

The town is served by the

Colonia Catriel Airport Colonia Catriel Airport ( es, link=no, Aeropuerto de Colonia Catriel) is an airport serving the city of Catriel in the Río Negro Province of Argentina Argentina (), officially the Argentine Republic ( es, link=no, República Argentin ...

References

Populated places in Río Negro Province Populated places established in 1899 {{RíoNegroAR-geo-stub