Shale Driller Stuns Creditors as Argentina’s Dollars Dwindle
- YPF asking creditors for short-term relief, swap into new note
- But investors are balking at the terms energy firm proposed
View of a tank truck of Argentinian state-run energy company YPF.
Photographer: RONALDO SCHEMIDT/AFPThis article is for subscribers only.
In the 99 years since it was founded to pump the oil fields of Patagonia, Argentine energy driller YPF SA has been whipsawed by countless booms and busts. If global oil markets weren’t collapsing, it seemed, then Argentina was mired in a debt crisis that was wreaking havoc on the whole nation’s finances.
Never, though, had the company been pushed into a large-scale default of any kind. Until, it would appear, now. Word of this came in an odd way: Officials at state-run YPF sent a press release in the dead of night laying out a plan to saddle creditors with losses in a debt exchange.