Malvinas: el tema del petroleo.

Para el autor, un catedrático norteamericano, los magros descubrimientos petroleros en Malvinas no son gran cosa. Pero, reconoce que dado el valor simbólico que tienen las islas, tanto para la Gran Bretaña como para la Argentina. Es como echar sal en una vieja herida.

Falklands Oil Rekindles Argentina-U.K. Tensions in the South Atlantic

By Jeremy Martin | 03 Apr 2012

Monday marked the 30th anniversary of the bloody 74-day war between Argentina and Great Britain over the Falkland Islands, known in Argentina as the Malvinas, in the South Atlantic. It was an anniversary that did not go unnoticed in either country, with the islands’ offshore oil reserves largely driving the renewed attention.

Exploratory oil drilling commenced in early 2010 in the waters off the string of islands where sheep have long outnumbered people. Several British oil concerns have spent the past two years drilling to assess the potential in the waters surrounding the islands, with increasing success.

Though relevant for its significance from an energy perspective, the drilling has more notably stoked long-simmering tensions between Buenos Aires and London over British control of the islands, which Argentina continues to claim sovereignty over. And as the drilling activity has ramped up, so has the rhetoric from Buenos Aires.

At the United Nations, Argentina denounced what it called British “militarization” of the islands, in reference to the regular presence of British military patrol vessels, and the Argentine foreign minister has suggested his country will pursue legal action against energy companies drilling there. Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner has gone so far as to accuse the oil firms of plundering her nation’s natural resources and oil.

The potential presence of oil reserves in the waters surrounding the Falklands had already been revealed by exploratory efforts in the 1970s. Some minor discoveries were even made before the most recent drilling campaign, but suffered from the drop in global oil prices in the 1990s. However, active drilling and exploration activity now appears to be uncovering significant oil reserves.

The discovery by the British firm Rockhopper Exploration of roughly 500 million barrels of oil off the north of the islands is an important marker, signaling the opening of a new chapter in the South Atlantic. The company is looking for investors to help with the development of the Sea Lion field and intends to begin pumping oil by 2016.

That field may be but the first page in that new chapter, though, as several more wells are planned for the waters south of the islands this year. One of the firms drilling those new wells, Falklands Oil and Gas, has said it expects the southern waters off the islands to hold more potential than the area surrounding the Sea Lion find.

The political actors in today’s Falkland Islands drama greatly differ from those of the early 1980s. The military leaders in Buenos Aires are long gone, and across the Atlantic, London is also far removed from the days of the Iron Lady’s rule.

Indeed, the ingredients for that fateful military encounter appear to be long relegated to history, save one crucial element: Argentina’s continued claim to sovereignty over the wind-swept islands.

The ongoing effort to explore for oil has long been perceived by Argentines as salt in the collective national wound and served as a reminder that Buenos Aires’ efforts to regain sovereignty over the islands has proved Sisyphean. The fact that there are now significant economic and energy windfalls at stake has accentuated the effect.

Not surprisingly, Fernandez’s government has aggressively seized upon the issue to rally both her countrymen and other nations in South America. The renewed dispute has again placed the Falklands at ground zero of Argentina’s domestic politics, but long before this week’s anniversary, Fernandez routinely used the issue over the course of her administration to distract a disaffected public from the disarray, if not missteps, of her government. With inflation now spiraling upward, dozens of international arbitration cases still pending and the unresolved Paris Club debt issue -- dating back to the country’s sovereign debt default in 2001 -- far from complete resolution, Fernandez has ample reason to try to use the Falkland Islands dispute to regain her public’s trust.

Beyond the efforts at the U.N., and closer to home, Argentina has also engaged in a campaign to keep the Falklands issue at the top of the South American regional agenda. Fernandez has skillfully framed the Falkland Islands sovereignty claim as a Latin American issue, more than just an Argentine grievance. With countries of the region readily joining the dispute, it has evolved from a conflict between Argentina and Great Britain to one pitting all of Latin America against London.

In late-2011, Argentina’s Mercosur allies banned Falklands-flagged ships from docking at Mercosur ports. And Peru’s refusal last month to allow a previously scheduled visit by a British warship underscored the support Argentina has gained from beyond the region’s predictable “anti-colonialist” axis represented by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Bolivian President Evo Morales. BHP Billiton’s decision in 2011 to relinquish its interest in the Falkland Islands was likewise seen as a key victory for the Argentine government and demonstrated the commercial leverage the issue affords the country.

Meanwhile, London has not been shy to respond to Buenos Aires’ heated rhetoric. British officials have blasted the military accusations and Argentina’s newly organized commercial blockade as baseless, and British Foreign Secretary William Hague reaffirmed Britain’s commitment to self-determination for the islands. However, the Falklands do not count a large British military presence, with roughly a thousand troops and a few fighter jets. The meager permanent military presence coupled with ongoing defense cuts in Great Britain, and particularly diminished aircraft carrier capabilities, could pose challenges for any major military effort in the South Atlantic on London’s part.

Thirty years on, islands that were for long best-suited to sheep and hearty residents are again in the public eye. It is easy to assume that the fateful 1982 armed conflict is ancient history, and in many ways it is. But that might change should the world’s next great oil play be found, adding economic and energy stakes to what has historically been a largely symbolic dispute.

Jeremy M. Martin is the director of the Energy Program at the Institute of the Americas at the University of California, San Diego. The institute is a nonprofit inter-American organization focused on economic development in the Western Hemisphere. Martin can be reached at jermartin@ucsd.edu.

Photo: A sign in memory of the war dead from the Falklands War, Córdoba, Argentina. Translation: "It is forbidden to forget them. They are not negotiable" (photo by flickr user Vera & Jean-Christophe, licensed under the Creative Commons 2.0 Share-Alike Agreement).