The Expropriation of YPF in Historical Perspective. Limits and Challenges of State Power Intervention in Argentina Today

ESTEBAN SERRANI

Bruselas

Conferencia; Financial Transparency and Tax Heavens. Southern Regions Program Strategy Meeting; 2016

Financial Transparency Coalition. Agencia de Cooperación Internacional al Desarrollo de Noruega (NORAD).

The main objective of this article is to analyze the course of the state oil company YPF since privatization until its renationalization between 1989 and 2012. This article analyzes the national particularities to explain why the YPF was completely privatized in the 90s (contrary to the regional experience in Mexico, Venezuela and Brazil) and how, only twenty years later, the same company was back under a process of expropriation and state control ?which had vast popular and parliamentary support. In this regard, this article analyses the consequences of deregulation and financial liberalization of the oil industry from the acquisition of YPF by the Spanish multinational Repsol in 1999, until its nationalization in 2012.