ABSTRACT
Argentina’s oil problems stand in strong contrast to those of Venezuela. While Venezuelans worried about oil exports and oil prices high enough to yield as much as possible in the way of tax receipts and foreign exchange, Argentina’s government sought to increase domestic oil production in order to reduce imports and save foreign exchange* To accomplish these ends, the government of President Arturo Frondizi in 1958 and 1959 signed a series of contracts with private companies who were to undertake a program of oil exploration, development, and drilling, more extensive than could be immediately accomplished by Yacimientos Petrolíferos Fiscales (YPF), the state oil agency to which the development of Argentine oil had been entrusted for the last thirty-five years. By decree dated 15 November 1963, President Arturo Umberto Illia’s government declared these contracts null and void as illegal and prejudicial to the economic interests of the country. President Illia’s government was overthrown and replaced by the government of General Juan Carlos Ongania in June 1966, and the following September General Ongania’s government set up a committee to discuss with the private companies the conditions under which they would be willing to resume their activities in Argentina. The similarities between the Venezuelan and the Argentine cases consist not in the nature of the problems involved but in the nature of the negotiations between the governments and the companies. It is our purpose in this chapter to consider the economic and political causes that led the Argentine government to sign contracts with private oil companies between 1958 and 1961, to nullify these contracts in 1963, and to renegotiate some of them in 1967.
