YPF hails Milei agenda as Abu Dhabi joins Argentina’s LNG push

State-run YPF SA said Argentina’s oil and gas industry would benefit from sweeping tax and labour reforms that President Javier Milei is drafting after he won a mandate from voters to press ahead with his libertarian experiment.

“The big reform for our industry was done,” YPF Chief Executive Officer Horacio Marín told Bloomberg Television’s Joumanna Bercetche on Tuesday in Abu Dhabi, citing special conditions for energy investors enshrined in law, known as RIGI, and deregulated oil and fuel markets. “There are new reforms for the tax and labor regime that will also help a lot because we need to be more modern, so that will help our product.”

Business leaders have lamented the burden of Argentina’s tax and labour laws for years, arguing they’ve held back investment. Employment rules in particular have been hard to overhaul because of the country’s powerful trade unions.

Change would no doubt favour growth in the Vaca Muerta, a shale patch in Patagonia where YPF has spearheaded development as Argentina tries to mirror the US boom in the Permian Basin.

Plans are in the works to ship both shale oil and gas from the prized Argentine formation. In the Persian Gulf nation, YPF announced that the overseas investment arm of Abu Dhabi National Oil Co is looking to become a partner in its project to build a floating LNG terminal with Italy’s Eni SpA, confirming an earlier Bloomberg News report.

Marín said he hoped to get a binding commitment from XRG within a month as YPF and Eni work on a financing deal for the project, which is targeting production of 12 million tons a year.

If the project does go ahead – a definitive decision may come as soon as mid-2026 – it will require some of the biggest liquefaction vessels ever built, Marin said. “I am very proud because there were no LNG projects before President Milei took power, and now we have one of six millions tons and this one, which I am very positive will become a reality.”

Other highlights from the interview:

– The LNG project is targeting a market window in 2030, when there could be global gas shortfall

– YPF is budgeting for crude prices next year at between US$60 and US$70 a barrel

–  The VMOS shale oil export project is on track to be operational by end-2026, though port construction is a potential bottleneck.