Argentina oil driller YPF surges as victorious Javier Milei touts privatisation

Argentina’s YPF SA surged the most on record following the election of outsider presidential candidate Javier Milei, who said he plans to privatise the state-owned oil and gas producer and remove controls stymieing the sector.

The driller’s American Depository Shares soared as much as 43 percent, the biggest intraday move since they began trading in 1993. 

Milei has pledged a radical shake-up to fix decades of policy mismanagement in the inflation-slammed country, including dollarising the economy, shutting the Central Bank and ending fuel pricing controls. 

These measures and others have kept YPF and the Vaca Muerta shale basin on “the backburner,” Bloomberg Intelligence oil analyst Fernando Valle said. In theory, Milei’s plans should improve YPF’s margins and attract foreign direct investment.

“It’s a matter of whether he can achieve it,” he said.

At the same time, Milei’s efforts in the oil sector could be derailed by the US$16 billion that Argentina was ordered in September to pay over its 2012 re-nationalisation of YPF. Litigation funder Burford Capital, which backs the entities a US judge said are owed the award, didn’t reply to a request for comment.