Gazprom may team up with Argentine energy firm YPF to explore and
extract oil and gas in the South American country, Argentine Foreign Minister
Hector Timerman said on Wednesday.
Gazprom specialists will hold meetings
with YPF staff to agree on details of their potential cooperation.
In May 2012, the Argentine president
signed a law on expropriating 51 percent of YPF stock previously held by
Spain
’s oil and gas firm Repsol and its subsidiary YPF Gas
S.A.
The Argentine authorities claimed Repsol
YPF invested insufficiently in the country’s oil and gas sector, expatriating
profits in the form of dividends and also exported huge amounts of crude to
gain from high world oil prices instead of deliveries to the Argentine market
administered by the government.
In early June, the Argentine government
completed YPF nationalization, appointing the company’s new head and board of
directors.