MODELO HIDROCARBURÍFERO EN ARGENTINA (1990-2015): DEL EXTRACTIVISMO CLÁSICO NEOLIBERAL AL (NEO)EXTRACTIVISMO PSEUDO-PROGRESISTA / HYDROCARBON PATTERN IN ARGENTINA (1990-2015): FROM CLASSIC, NEOLIBERAL EXTRACTIVISM TO PSEUDO-PROGRESSIVE (NEO)EXTRACTIVISM

According to the literature, the current Latin America (neo)extractivist paradigm would differ from the neoliberal, “classic” extractive pattern due to the lower relative weight of foreign private capital and the appropiation by the State of a substantial piece of the surplus through several mechanisms (e.g. normative and institutional reforms, growth of pre-existent taxes, public enterprises’ creation, imposing export taxes, etc.). This paper critically examines such thesis and then empirically contrast them for the Argentinean case by analyzing the continuities and the ruptures suffered by the hydrocarbon pattern between the neoliberal period and the (neo)developmentalist or “progressivism” model. The article’s findings are paradoxal. On one hand, they show that the new legislation strengthened and completed the neoliberal reform and the public companies’ creation and the expropriation of privatized firms consolidated the foreign capital’s presence, reduced the National State participation on the hydrocarbon surplus and sharpened the social and environmental impacts of the model. On the other hand, the export taxes and the energetic subsidios policies have implied the enterprise risk’s socialization by transferring a millionaire mass of resources from the public treasury to the capital, as well as they heightened the situation of energy crisis