Two years ago, Argentine President Cristina Kirchner proposed legislation to the National Congress that would expropriate 51% of YPF, the longtime state-owned oil company that was privatized in 1992, from the Spanish company Repsol. Her government then promised unequivocally that it would require Repsol to conduct environmental remediation wherever YPF’s oil operations had done harm. “The environment, the territory of Argentines, is not auctioned off; it has a price,” Planning Minister Julio De Vido told Congress in April 2012. “On that we’ll be absolutely inflexible. We’ve already spoken with the [provincial] governors so they’ll estimate, province by province, all environmental damage...” Soon after, lawmakers approved the expropriation on grounds that Repsol, which acquired YPF in 1999, had failed to invest sufficiently in exploration and... [Log in to read more]
