`Oil Nationalism' as a Deterrent to Structural Change? The Case of Oil Contracts in Argentina (1958-1962)

Due to growing oil imports, political leaders had been forced to let private companies produce the much-needed oil without which modern life is impossible. The most strident political clashes with what is known as ‘oil nationalism’, both ending in a coup d’´etat, happened in the period 1954/55 and 1962/63. The historical, political and diplomatic background is developed so as to understand the complexities that led to the annulment of this unprecedented and effective policy with impressive effects on oil production and investment. The historical-political narrative is finally consolidated in an empirical exercise in which we corroborate the potential of foreign direct investment in the process of import substitution in Argentina’s oil industry. For this analysis we build the dataset from primary and secondary sources for oil drillings since the 1920s and calculated the yearly per capita evolution of oil production for the world and for Argentina