Argentina

The YPF - Chevron agreement: development or semi-colony?

Adolfo Pérez Esquivel

01/08/2013

Opinión

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Our country has had to put up with every kind of calamity, more, I think, even than the seven plagues of the Bible, but we have the ability to survive and continue to build it in spite of everything.

One of these calamities is the external debt which became the "eternal debt", whose vulture funds have not lost their grip on their victim.

Successive governments denied and continue to deny establishing an audit to determine what part of this debt is legitimate and what is illegitimate, and now the vultures demand payment of an immoral and illegitimate debt and the country must submit to tribunals of the U.S.

While the government insists on the benefits obtained and defends the "decade won" under the K model (Kirchner), which is self-defined as "national and popular", there are contradictions and uncertainties that are highly irritating and which provoke justified tensions in various social sectors, both within the country and at regional and international levels.

When the Argentine government expropriated 51% of Spanish company Repsol, they spoke of the nationalization of petroleum and the recovery of sovereignty, but now they have signed a contract with the U.S. company Chevron offering them unheard of advantages. What does this say for national sovereignty?

Here are some of the consequences of the new agreement between YPF and the transnational oil company:

- The judgment that Chevron lost in Ecuador for violating human rights and the impunity that the Argentinean Supreme Court accorded them

Chevron-Texaco after twenty years of litigation in Ecuador was condemned to pay 19 billion dollars for damages caused by oil spills amounting to millions of litres of oil and the contamination of rivers and nearly 500 thousand hectares in territories of indigenous communities. These damages were denounced by the indigenous communities and CONAIE.

The company left Ecuador and came to ground in Argentina, with the blessing of the government, and the Argentine justice system received the Ecuadorian judicial order and ordered the confiscation of its properties for the amount of the debt. The company appealed to the Argentinean Supreme Court of Justice and this court cancelled the seizure, based on the YFP-Chevron agreement, establishing a precedent of juridical impunity that will affect all Latin American peoples.

Recently we held a Congress in the Academy of Environmental Science in Venice, where I raised the above-mentioned problem, so that scientists and legal experts could evaluate the impact and the consequences from the perspective of international law and the health and environmental impact on peoples. Together with many organizations we have been urging the creation of an International Criminal Tribunal for the Environment. It is inconceivable that a country that is a fugitive from justice, in this case that of Ecuador, could continue to operate in another country.

- The initiative of the U.S. Department of State and fracking

This agreement is part of the "Global Shale Gas Initiative" of the U.S. Department of State and includes Argentina since 2010. In 2012 we had a meeting in Cuba of intellectuals from 21 countries "for peace and preservation of the environment", together with Comandante Fidel Castro. In this meeting Fidel spoke of this initiative of the Department of State and that Argentina is the third country, after China and the United States, with the largest reserves of Shale Gas. The "Chevron Decree" (Dec. Nº 929.13) involves the exploitation of unconventional hydrocarbons, extracted through hydraulic fracturing (fracking) which is highly contaminating for the environment and naturally for the population.

It would be important for our national government to undertake an investigation as to why fracking is prohibited in France, in Bulgaria, in the state of Vermont (USA) and in Quebec (Canada), while in other areas there exists a moratorium (suspension) as has happened in New York and in various European regions. It would not be the first time that central countries export their contamination to countries of the ill-labelled "third world" to the benefit of the ill-labelled "first world." Do we remember the paper mills in Uruguay?

Is this environmental sovereignty?

- The rights of first nations

This agreement affects our sovereignty at many other levels. For example it violates the national and international norms concerning the rights of indigenous peoples, due to the fact that they were not consulted before the signing of the contract as is established in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in its article 19, in article 6 of the ILO Convention 169 on indigenous and tribal peoples in independent nations, and in subsection 17 of article 75 of the National Constitution of Argentina. And our pluri-national soveregnty? Is anti-imperialism only a matter of statues (Christopher Columbus by Juana Azurduy)?

- Would we have to compensate Chevron? Bilateral investment agreements and ICSID

The contract subjects us to tribunals of France and the United States given the bilateral investment agreements that we have with these countries. This means that Chevron will come to carry off our resources with unprecedented facilities, contaminate us, and if we decide to dissolve the contract because of its unfavourable consequences, Chevron can take us to court in ICSID and we would have to pay thousands of millions of dollars in indemnities.

Argentina is the country of the world with the most court cases in ICSID, an entity of the World Bank that tends to rule in favour of transnational corporations, and the amount that foreign companies are claiming against us is approximately 65 billion dollars.

Is this juridical sovereignty? Has the Argentine government asked itself why Bolivia, Ecuador and Venezuela denounced ICSID and withdrew in 2007, 2009 and 2012 respectively? Do they wonder why Brazil never joined ICSID?

Energy sovereignty and Latin American unity

The recovery of the 51% of YPF and its regulatory decree were important steps that were taken and which I had personally supported. But the government has lost its way in a grotesque and improvised manner, surrendering with enormous benefits one of the potentially most important oilfields in the world: Vaca Muerta. And allowing Chevron to move royalties out of the country untaxed and then to sell us our own petroleum at the international price.

Is it too hard to think of a YPF that would be 100 % public and national that would make strategic agreements involving Latin American unity with the oil companies PDV (Venezuela), Petrobras (Brazil), YPFB (Bolivia) and ANCAP (Uruguay)? Is it that hard to think that the national resources of Latin Americans should belong to Latin Americans? Is it so hard to think that our Government should invest what is needed in the research and development of renewable energy, so as to have new complementary sources?

Governmental irresponsibility hides serious consequences for the people involved in this measure, as it does with mega-mining (Barrick Gold and others) and pesticides (Monsanto).

The vice-minister of the economy, Kicillof, merrily declares that "we will have a carnival of activity". I do not know to what point those who govern measure the consequences of this contract and the meaning of the word sovereignty. There is some reason that these agreements are done in secret.

What we are certain of is that "development" involves attaining a balance between the needs of peoples and the environment.

The national government should consult the Argentine people with binding force with respect to these decisions which, one they become operative, will have irreversible consequences that will affect many generations.

We Argentines should debate what we want our energy for and at the service of whom, without forgetting that we are not the owners of Mother Earth, we are simply her children and we should care for and honour her.

(Translation for ALAI by Jordan Bishop)

- Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, President of Paz y Justicia (Peace and Justice).

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