S.E.R.G. WP Series #04-2026: Hydrocarbon Governance Bargains in Argentina, 1907–2026

Argentina has repeatedly reconfigured hydrocarbon governance while pursuing domestic supply, national authority and economic development. Existing studies document individual episodes in depth but do not compare systematically how successive institutional settlements allocated decision rights, investment responsibilities, risks and resource rents across the historical sequence. This article develops the concept of a hydrocarbon governance bargain and adapts it to a federal petroleum system with divided public authority, a publicly controlled national oil company, domestic price intervention and large infrastructure requirements. The central question is whether investment credibility alone is sufficient to sustain hydrocarbon governance in Argentina. A structured historical comparison of nine periods from 1907 to 2026 applies the same analytical dimensions to each period and identifies recurrent vulnerabilities related to investment commitment, rent distribution and coordination. These categories organize the comparison rather than isolate a unique causal pathway for each transition. Across the Argentine sequence, institutional stability shows no consistent association with the prevailing ownership model. State-led, liberal and hybrid arrangements differed in how they allocated financing obligations, commercial and political risks and control over prices and exports. Provincial resource ownership strengthened producing provinces’ stake in continued production while creating additional requirements for basin-wide coordination. These findings refine bounded adaptability as a provisional design proposition: protection of committed investment, defined procedures for prospective adjustment and a politically supportable distribution of sectoral rents. The post-2023 arrangement provides stronger project-level protection, but its distributional support and durability remain untested.