Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Argentine Petroleum Consumption, Production, and Imports,
1922-1930
(In thousands of cubic meters)
YPF
Production
Total Imports as Total as % of
Argentine % of Argentine Total
Year Consumption Consumption Production Consumption
1922 1,495 70 455 23
1923 1,720 69 530 24
1924 2,031 64 741 27
1925 1,802 47 952 35
1926 2,348 47 1,248 32
1927 2,772 51 1,372 30
1928 3,142 54 1,442 27
1929 3,393 56 1,493 26
1930 3,431 58 1,431 24
Source: Solberg, Carl E. “YPF: The Formative Years of Latin America's Pioneer State Oil
Company, 1922-39.” In
LatinAmericanOilCompaniesandthePoliticsofEnergy
. Edited by
John D. Wirth (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1985), p. 66.
would have eliminated all private firms from Argentina's production
and sales; however, the nationalization bill proved too controversial,
and Yrigoyen backed away. Ultimately, Shell received permission to
built the refinery in exchange for providing on-the-job training for
students of the new Petroleum Institute of the University of Buenos
Aires.
President Yrigoyen and the nationalists did not yet possess the
capacity for nationalizing the Argentine oil industry. The nation needed
the foreign oil companies because YPF could not produce, refine,
and market sufficient domestic petroleum to supply the market, and
the nationalists could not keep out the foreign oil companies while
maintaining development of the national economy. A more propitious
moment would come later for the nationalist movement.
When that moment arrived, neither Yrigoyen nor the Radicals were
around to usher the country into the age of national industrialization
