Fri Mar 29, 2024
March 29, 2024

In face of the REPSOL-YPF announced expropriation

In view of the Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner’s announcement of seizing control of 51% of  Yacimientos Petrolíferos Fiscales (YPF) shares [1], all of them belonging to the powerful Repsol, the main Spanish oil multinational, the  IWL-FI (International Workers League – FI) makes known publiclythe following statements by PSTU- Argentina and  Corriente Roja in the Spanish State.

Statement of  PSTU- Argentina

Reject the threats of Spanish and European imperialism.

Not a single penny to the looters!

Nationalize all the hydrocarbons without any payment!

In face of the Argentine government measures, the company Repsol YPF, the Spanish government and its King, along with the European Economic Community have threatened our country with punishments and sanctions. We repudiate these threats and defend the absolute right, and even more so, the obligation of the Argentine State, to recover its natural resources and move against the multinationals that have been plundering our wealth.

From then on, we call a mass mobilization against any attempt of imperialism to attack these measures, and for new and deeper measures, not only against Repsol. If they come to implement sanctions it is necessary to expropriate all the Spanish companies in the country.

Then and continuing our action, we urge the national government to expropriate 100% of YPF, and all the other energy sector’s multinationals in order to achieve a solution for the energy crisis.

Reject the colonists!

The whole country was filled with anger and hatred, when listening to these colonizers of the XXI Century treating Argentina as a colony. They think we’re living in the Viceroys and Vicereines times! [2]. It’s the same European Economic Community that through the Treaty of Lisbon recognizes England as the rightful owner of the Falklands.

{module Propaganda 30 anos}We, from the PSTU, condemn these threats; we defend the sovereign right of our country on our natural and wealth resources, and call on the workers and peoples of our Latin America, and the working class of  Spain and Europe to rise up against this humiliation.

Just as we have been rejecting since the 90s the handing out of our state companies and also rejected the submission to these plundering multinationals and criticized the subsequent governments, including the current one, for keeping such submission, we state today: The oil and gas are ours! These measures are not enough! Let’s fight for 100% expropriation without paying a single cent!

Right now, Repsol and its lackey government of King Juan Carlos threaten with lawsuits and claim hugely high amount for compensation. On behalf of the Argentine government Kicilloff Axel said, “We will not pay them what they want.”

But are we going to pay them anything? They stole much more than they paid to get YPF; fortunes have been carried out of Argentina each year. They have only left debts, unemployed workers and environmental disasters. We from the PSTU say: not a single penny to Repsol, the YPF looter! That Brufau, Rajoy [3] and the King of Spain stop stealing the world! We do not accept that they are paid, let alone with ANSES money, that is, with the money of our retirees. We claim that the Argentine government does not pay a single penny to Repsol!

Some voices of our own country and from Latin America now stand in the defense of Repsol. From the Mexican and Chilean government to Macri [4] and the big businessmen, and even from Guillermo Pereyra, Secretary General of the Oil Workers’ Federation, they have been talking about the “security for investments” and predict a hell of international isolation, in chorus with the Spanish government. We reject the statements of these modern sepoys [5]. We defend not only the right but the obligation of the Argentine State to exercise its sovereignty even further and deeper in order to recover all our resources.

A limited measure

The government measure is a blow to Repsol and European imperialism, and implies the recovery, on a limited and incomplete scale, from our resources. It consists of an expropriation of 51% of the capital stock of Repsol YPF, keeping 49% in private hands, with 27% to Eskenazi family, and 17% tointernational investors, especially Americans.

However, as Cristina Kirchner acknowledged, it is not nationalization. It remains a private corporation, affecting only the Spanish Repsol, protecting the Eskenazi family’s property – who maintained their shares without needing to put a single penny on it thanks to Nestor Kirchner’s management – and also protecting the U.S. investors – hence the quietness of Obama-. And the state portion can be further granted under concession to private companies.

Moreover, Cristina’s measure does not touch in a single inch of  Pan American Energy (British capital and the owner of Cerro Dragon, the biggest oilfield in the country, under contract until 2047) nor does it touch in any of the other multinational oil companies who plunder us.

Therefore, we demand the government not to play with the workers’ and Argentine people’s feelings. Even though we defend this measure from the imperialist attacks, we do not support it: because it is not enough, it does not meet all the interests of working people.

The only way to recover the energy sovereignty is the nationalization of all hydrocarbons, starting with the cancellation of all concessions made to private companies, both multinational and domestic ones. And the establishment of a major state oil company, which keeps the monopoly on all the hydrocarbons, and that all the oil and gas management is put under the workers control.

Out with all multinationals! The oil and gas belong to Argentine and must be at the service of the workers and the people and their needs: health, education, housing, employment and development. So that fuels come cheap to the people and expensive for large companies.

Unity to move forward

The current energy crisis is the result of years of selling off and privatization of our state-owned companies and the imperialist plunder on our resources.

During all these years, the situation got worse. The government policy, their insistence on saying they will not nationalize show that Cristina’s current measure, so transcendent, does not represent a measure that may result in the so required 180-degree-shift. Therefore, government maintains the Mennen’s Constitution of 1994 and his policies on oil, the provincialization of the resource ownership and the whole scheme for the national petrol, gas and oil production and distribution.

The fundamental change will only be accomplished through a major worker’s and popular mobilization that firmly impose it. The oil workers were the ones who, with their struggles against multinationals, which have caused them layoffs, persecution, repression and imprisonment by this same current government, those workers were the ones who questioned through their struggles the energy matrix and the plundering of resources. They have already signaled the path. We demand that the whole process guarantees not only the preservation of jobs and working conditions, but answer to all the labor demands of the workers, starting with the full stability and payment on time, as well as the reinstatement of any worker who had lost their jobs in times of YPF’s privatization or had been fired by REPSOL or other companies in the petrol chain.

Only the workers have the full authority to carry out the struggle for comprehensive nationalization of hydrocarbons.

Yet we call on all workers and popular organizations for the broadest possible unity of action to respond with mobilization and fight to any attempt to punish our country, while we demand that the government does not pay a single dollar to the looters and that YPF be 100% state-owned. And we will fight to impose all these demands.

For a complete and fundamental change

We from the PSTU (Argentina) will continue to raise a program of fundamental measures, the only one that can really guarantee the energy sovereignty for the Argentine people and future generations.

·     Cancellation of all the concessions oil and gas fields;

·     Cancellation of the provincialization of 1994, the Mining Code of 1921 and all prior agreements and their renegotiations;

·     Expropriation and nationalization of all hydrocarbons companies. Expropriation without payment of all companies, both multinational and domestic;

·     For a major state-owned national oil, monopolistic and under control of workers;

·     Cancellation of hydrocarbon exports, prioritizing the present and future domestic consumption;

·     Defending the workers’ rights in the oil and gas: stability, salary, transfer the subcontracted employees to the oil company’s agreement, eight-hour working day without lowering the wages, wage tax cancellation, etc…

Statement of Corriente Roja – Spanish State

Arrogant with Argentina, lackeys of Merkel and Sarkozy

The Argentine government’s decision to nationalize 51% of the shares of YPF, a subsidiary of Repsol, has triggered a crisis and a patriotism campaign against the “outrage against us”. The PP came out insisting saying that “the attack against Repsol is an attack against Spain and its government.”

Considering these facts, we from Corriente Roja wish to point out that:

1The conflict with Repsol in Argentina has neither started currently nor is it limited to a conflict with the Argentine government. The presence of Repsol in Argentina dates back to 1999 when YPF was sold by President Menem during the privatizing orgy of the 1990’s, and ended up with the Corralito [6].

All these years were marked by constant confrontations between this multinational and Argentine workers and popular sectors, who suffered the effects of the privatization of the oil sector in favor of Repsol. Thousands of layoffs and workers arrested for refusing to be condemned to starvation was the first price Argentine people paid soon after the entry of Repsol. It was the pressure of the Argentine’s workers and people that forced Cristina Kirchner’s Government to go further than she wanted.

2 – YPF delivers to Repsol 50% of its total oil and natural gas production, about half of its reserves and one third of its profits. During the past few years, while Repsol-YPF plundered Argentine reserves accumulated huge profits, the oil production started falling. The oil production decreased 23% between 2003 and 2011. The same happened with the gas, from 46 billion cubic meters in 2003 to 42 in 2011. This decline in production forced Argentina to spend even more resources with fuels and energy importation. “From auto supplying which had been conquered in the mid-1980s with the state-owned YPF, Argentina started to import, by using the private multinationals’ model.” (Avanzada Socialista, PSTU’s newspaper in Argentina).

3 – Repsol’s management, as well as its investments, does not meet other criteria, as it is for any multinational, other than the production for profit, the profits’ optimization. Between 1999 and 2011 Repsol-YPF invested in Argentina US$ 8 billion, while getting a net income of 16.5 billion dollars, of which 13 billion were distributed among its shareholders. These are the looting accounts to which they submitted Argentina throughout all these years. During this period Repsol has continued draining the reserves with no other concern than ensuring profits for its shareholders.

4 – The Rajoy Government overtly defends “the Spanish company” when in reality Repsol’s shareholders are mostly foreigners. The Spanish shareholders are only 27% among them: La Caixa (13%), BBVA (4%) and the construction company SACYR (10%, purchased with credit from 46 banks, including Santander, French, British and Dutch Banks). The so-called ‘free float’, the volatile capital that is priced at the stock exchange, owns 62.21% of the shares, and most of the bonds (42%) are in the hands of American and British investment funds (JP Morgan Chase bank National Association-USA-Chase Nominees Ltd., GB-, State Street Bank and Trust-USA-…), to which we must add 10% of the Mexican PEMEX and 3.32% of French Bank BNP-Paribas.

5 – No matter how hard Rajoy beats about his chest with demonstrations of patriotism, the action of  Repsol in Argentina shows the role of the “Spanish” multinational corporations in Latin America.

Like the other imperialists, the Spanish and their multinational companies (Repsol, Telefonica, Santander, BBVA, Inditex, Acciona …) are synonymous of looting the wealth of people and exploiting the working class. Repsol’s example, supporting dictatorships like that of Obiang in Guinea Equatorial or that of Nazarbayev in Kazakhstan or the government of Peru, where Repsol was denounced by the organization Survival International, is a proof that there is not an “humanitarian and civilizing” imperialism, the European one,  and other “militaristic and dictatorial,” the American one.

When Spanish multinationals are qualified as “pirates”, some of them such as Repsol, strictly speaking, should be qualified as corsairs because they steal using a flag, but hand out most of the loot to others.

6 – The patriotic campaign of the government shows the coward’s “courage” threatening to declare a trade war against Argentina to protect the interests of banks and investors while this same government has become the foreman of Merkel and Sarkozy, the administrator of the country’s probate estate through the payment of a spurious and immoral public debt.

In Spain the workers and the people have been looted, the budget cuts and counter-reforms have generated about six million unemployed, thousands of families are evicted and thrown on the streets like animals, and the youth has no present or future. Faced with these facts, this government does not offer the slightest gesture of resistance to the greed of the German, French and Spanish Banks. But if Argentina stops and demands what belongs to the country, its oil resources, then a patriotic campaign is organized from the top. These “patriots” carry the flag in their wallets. They are patriots of the financial system, of multinationals whom they defend and to whom they govern at the expense of the workers’ and the people’s looting, whether from Argentine or from the Spanish State.

7 – It is shameful tosee the “left” offer, as Rubalcaba has done on behalf of PSOE, their support to Repsol and to the Government of PP. It is shameful to see the leader of the UGT, Antonio Deusa, General Secretary of the Industry Federation demanding from the government “a resounding response” and warning that if there is not a resounding response, there is the danger of a “contagion effect” in the rest of Spanish companies operating in Argentina . The leaders of UGT, who did not even question the looting arising from the payment of the public debt interests, fill their “patriotic” chest to defend Repsol.

8 – The Argentinean government, which says it is “expropriating” Repsol, is actually becoming a partner of Peterson, a Repsol industrial group, which owns 25% of YPF, whose shares remain untouchable. The real goal of the Argentinean government is not nationalizing the YPF as a whole, in order to put it at the service of workers, but to strengthen itself with the majority of the shares, so that it can exploit the resources found in the provinces of Neuquen and Mendoza, and it is quite possible that Argentina will eventually replace Repsol by other capitalist plunderers, Chinese or wherever they are.

9 – The workers, the young people, the popular sectors that are suffering the consequences of the cuts, the looting of the debt, a government that governs for multinationals and financial system, cannot do any less than repudiate the attempt to link the nationalization of Repsol to an “attack against Spain.” The Argentine people have the right to recover their resources and to dispose of them, they have every right to expel Repsol and all multinationals that were in the past and continue to be in the present part of those groups who plunder the people.

And far from repudiating this legitimate action, it is necessary to start demanding the same actions here, namely the suspension of the debt payment, the expropriation of the financial system and of the key industries placing them under the workers’ control in order to put all these resources at the service of a rescue plan for workers and the people, to reorganize the economy and end with unemployment.

·     Out with Repsol and all Spanish multinationals in Argentina!

·     The oiland natural gas belong to Argentine!

·     Out with thepatriotic campaign from the Rajoy government and the PSOE!

The confrontation continues …

After presenting the bill affecting the interests of the Repsol in the YPF, the Argentine government announced that it will also take over another company of Repsol dedicated to distributing the gas cylinders. It is YPFGas, the leading bottler cylinders retail distribution of liquid petroleum gas (or gas), with 85% of the market share. According to estimates, the project presented by Cristina Kirchner would be converted into law on May 3 by the Argentinean parliament (Clarín newspaper).

In the meantime, the Spanish government claims to have persuaded ten EU countries to take retaliation measures against Argentine, besides the U.S.. The Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs, Manuel García-Margallo, after meeting with U.S. Secretary of  State Hillary Clinton, in Brussels said he had reached an agreement to strengthen the collaboration between Madrid and Washington in order to “restore the international legality”.

Likewise, the president of the World Bank (WB), Robert Zoellick considered on Thursday, April 19, “a mistake” the decision of the Argentine government to take partial control of the oil company YPF. “I think it’s a mistake and I believe it is a symptom which we will have to be vigilant: if under economic pressure, countries opt for national and autarchic policies, and respond more to nationalism and protectionism,” Zoellick declared to the press at the opening of the semiannual meeting of the World Bank (El País).

For his part, the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, Alain Juppe, called a “European solidarity” to support the efforts of the European Commission with the Argentine Government. However he said he had no “particular concerns” about the French investments in Argentina. So did the vice president of the European Commission (EC) and Justice Commissioner, Viviane Reding, who threatened saying, “when someone attacks Spain is attacking the whole of the European Union.”

In the European Parliamentit will be voted a resolution on the case which will be approved by a large majority because the condemnation of the expropriation is almost unanimous. Also in its resolution it will be proposed that the EU raise the dispute to the WTO, to the G-8 and to the G-20, and that Argentina be denounced in these forums for not respecting the international law or the principle of legal security.

Notes:

[1] YPF– Argentine-state-owned company dedicated to the exploration, refining and sale of petroleum and its derived products, was privatized and sold to Spanish company Repsol in 1999 in the government of Carlos Menem;

[2]Periodin which Argentina was part of the Spanish colonies;

[3]Antonio Brufau(Repsol Chairman), Mariano Rajoy (Spanish Prime Minister);

[4]MauricioMacri – Buenos Aires mayor (elected in 2011, by the PRO – Republican Proposal, a center-rightist party);

[5]Indian Soldiers whoin the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries served in the armies of France, Portugal and England.

[6] The corralito was established in Argentina, to prevent and stop the withdrawal of deposits in checking and saving accounts, which would be exchanged for dollars or transferred directly to other countries. To this end, the government froze deposits from savers and weekly limits were established for the withdrawal of funds.

 

 

 

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