Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
the prices of petroleum products, and used political pressure to prevent
the private companies from expanding their production. Mosconi's
nationalistic views applied to all foreign companies. But he particularly
harbored suspicions of two of the biggest petroleum corporations in the
world—Royal Dutch Shell and Standard Oil of New Jersey.
These British and American companies suffered from the govern-
ment restrictions of the 1920s. Prompted by Mosconi, President
Alvear, in a 1924 decree, converted the Patagonia into a federal oil
reserve. That act restricted all oil companies but YPF from expand-
ing their holdings in the proven fields of the Patagonia. The decree
struck Shell harder than Standard Oil, as the latter was actively
exploring oil reserves elsewhere, in the province of Salta. There the
state government supported the activities of the foreign companies as
independent sources of revenues for the local oligarchy. Mosconi engi-
neered a second assault on the international oil companies in 1929.
After having expanded the retailing and refining apparatus of YPF, he
decreed a national petroleum price cut of 17 percent and established
a uniform price throughout the nation. The private companies were
forced to follow suit.
Argentina's burgeoning appetite for petroleum, the result of economic
expansion and the proliferation of automobiles and trucks, saved the
foreign companies from a complete nationalist onslaught. Mosconi's
YPF simply could not handle all the demand. Also, the Alvear govern-
ment favored British oil investments over Standard Oil, a legacy of both
of the elite's pro-British sentiments and Standard Oil's notoriety. By
1927, 13 private oil companies were still operating in Argentina. The
Royal Dutch Shell company was the country's largest, but Standard Oil
was moving up fast.
Shell and Standard Oil dominated the lucrative Buenos Aires mar-
ket, but the national price equalization established by Mosconi in
1929 rendered marketing in the interior cities unprofitable. Shell and
Standard Oil left that market to YPF, which weakened the national
company in its struggle with the international firms over the market in
the capital. Shell, however, had been shut out of much of Argentina's
growing markets for gasoline because it lacked a refinery. In 1927, it
finally obtained permission from the Alvear government to build a
refinery in Buenos Aires to compete with both YPF and Standard Oil.
But the following year, President Yrigoyen returned as president for a
second term and rescinded the permit. Instead, he pushed a bill before
Congress to nationalize the oil industry completely. Nationalization
