Energy strategic

National
The people looks for the auto- supply of petroleum
Energy strategic
By: Carlos Damián April 21, 2012
Of the fantasy to the facts
México. - The president from Argentina Cristina Fernandez of Kirchner (CFK), she declared that the actions that are looked for to expropriate are exclusively those that it has Repsol-YPF and not those of other private partners. After that announcement, the Executive from Spain said that he interprets the decision like “a hostile expression". “The government condemns with absolute energy the arbitrary decision of Argentina of expropriating the actions of Repsol in YPF", the Spanish minister of external matters, Jose Manuel Garcia Margallo said.

In Buenos Aires the titles of Locations ‘Yacimientos Petrolíferos Fiscales de Argentina’ (YPF), they fell 43 percent before being canceled their operative one. "The sum of all the wrongs to make YPF property of the state was consummated and this changes the tendency of the action flatly", Marcelo Paccione, analyst of ‘Consult Capital Sociedad de Bolsa’ said. The current total capitalization of YPF is from about 46 thousand 765 million pesos, or 10 thousand 640 million dollars to the official exchange rate, according to data of the Bolsa de Comercio de Buenos Aires. The signature has lost more than 4 thousand millions of dollars of the market value in so far in the year. The law of expropriation of Argentina foresees, as first instance, an agreement among the parts about the value to pay.

Without an agreement, it advances to a judicial process in which a magistrate requests to a tribunal that fixes the price of the transaction. Goldman Sachs said in a report that is not clear how much the government will pay for 51 percent of YPF and if the rest of its shareholders would be willing to continue as minority. Repsol-YPF has 57.4 percent of YPF, while the Grupo Petersen, the biggest local shareholder, belonging to the family Eskenazi, possesses 25.4. When responding the president to the threats of Spain she responds: "this president won't answer any threat, any grossnes won't respond, she won't make echo of the lack of respect neither of insolent sentences, because we represent the Argentineans; I am a state boss, don't unite 'patotera' (assassin)", CFK asserted.
The facts
Several years ago to make property of the state the oil company another time figured in the government's fantasy and of several members, the included president, and a ministry of State with privileged access to CFK and before to Nestor Kirchner. In April of 2006, the minister Julio de Vido and a reduced cortege traveled to La Paz to negotiate the price of the Bolivian gas and a gas’ duct for the Argentinean northeast. In that moment it occupied the Ministry of Hydrocarbons Andres Soliz Rada (ASR), an old left-wing nationalist to who a current Argentinean official had sheltered in his house during the dictatorship.

In the welcome message that made ASR, it was to remember that YPFB, it had been founded in 1936 following the idea Argentina of YPF. But that nostalgic YPF begun with Hipolito Yrigoyen and impelled by Marcelo Torcuato de Alvear together with a military engineer in charge of the state company, Enrique Mosconi, no longer existed in 2006. It had been privatized, atomized for Carlos Menem's neoliberal government between 1990 and 1992. It had been low majority control in January of 1999 the society anonymous low majority control of the Spanish Repsol.
Garage sale's fantasies
On 1939, the president Lazaro Cardenas generated Petroleos Mexicanos, the current Pemex. The General Cardenas had also tried with Mosconi that according to the investigator and diplomatic Carlos Piñeiro Iñiguez went who presented to another official, Juan Domingo Peron, before the president from Mexico. In this context each country rehearsed, in the thirties and later, different experiences with the petroleum, and in this traffic there were stages there were more purchases of private companies to make them property of the state and until flexible in front of the private capital as the one that they have faced Mexico with Felipe Calderon in Pemex, and Brazil with Getulio Vargas while it negotiated steel investments of The States in Brazil.

But the only country that has gone beyond the neoliberal politics, breaking the mold was the Argentina, at Carlos Menem's first government's beginning and at the end of the period second. He made it selling all that had in front, as the state’s sales of Brazilian Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Fernando Collor de Melo, and the Mexican Carlos Salinas de Gortari that was taken until the peanuts of the presidency of the Republic. With their state sales it overcame to Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship that to privatize partially again the copper nationalized by the government (1970-73) of the socialist Salvador Allende.

In most of South America, except for Chile, today they don't weigh the opinions that question State’s rectory; less the sour questions that criticize as negative the handling of the hydrocarbons with governments' responsibility. In fact neither they should be heavy, honestly, in western Europe. In October of 2008, one month after Lehman Brothers's fall, the minister of the treasure of Great Britain, Alistair Darling announced that the State would buy up to 60 thousand million dollars in actions of four British banks. It means a partial nationalization.

The government and Repsol also received the main left opponent's support, the Spanish Labor Socialist (PSOE) that sent official statements of solidarity. It was not so that the left-wings forces agglutinated in the Congress of the Deputies, as Plural Left-side that they noticed that the expropriation “is not an attack to Spain, but to a private entity of different nationalities, for what is a shame that the Spanish government has left in defense of the company". “Therefore it is a fallacy to consider this economic measure as an attack to Spain", the deputy, Alberto Garzon said. (La Jornada, política, p. 3, April 17, 2012)