On August 6, British oil company Harbour Energy formally presented its unaudited financial statement for the first half of 2026 to the stock markets . Through this corporate document and the information published on its official website, the London-based company—the legal successor to Premier Oil , which was sanctioned and barred from operating by the Argentine Federal Court for illegal drilling in the Malvina Islands—transparently revealed the true extent of its operations in the country, the importance of local fields to its structure, and the agreements already signed to export Patagonian gas to Europe.

International financial record and the contribution of local production

In its half-year report, Harbour Energy announced that it achieved total physical production of 509,000 barrels of oil per day (kboepd) across its various international operations, registering a 4% year-over-year increase. This performance, combined with the price of crude oil and gas in Europe, allowed it to project annual free cash flow of $1.8 billion , after recording revenues of $6.4 billion in the first half of the year.

In the financial report, the firm reported an adjusted EBITDAX of $4.5 billion .

In the hydrocarbon industry, EBITDAX is an accounting metric specialized in evaluating Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, Amortization and Exploration Expenses; it serves to measure the operating profitability and net cash generated by active productive wells, without the balance sheet being distorted by the multimillion-dollar costs of exploration campaigns carried out in other parts of the world.

With that operating liquidity, the oil company approved a $250 million share buyback program and plans to return a minimum of $800 million to its shareholders throughout the year.

Within this global scale, extraction in Argentina averages between 73,000 and 74,000 barrels per day (approximately 14.5% of the British group's total physical volume). In its management report, the executive team explicitly highlighted the connection of new production wells in three strategic locations: Norway, the United States, and Argentina .

The Argentine subsoil: the group's largest strategic reserve

Beyond the extraction volumes that the Patagonian basins currently provide, the official documentation of the British corporation reveals the true value that the company extracts from the country: its future reserves.

Harbour Energy formally informed its investors that it has over 700 million barrels of oil equivalent (mmboe) in "contingent 2C resources" in Argentina, primarily concentrated in Vaca Muerta . In oil industry jargon, 2C resources represent the central and most reliable technical scenario of hydrocarbons already discovered and verified through drilling, but whose large-scale commercial exploitation depends on resolving certain "contingencies," such as the granting of new state concessions, the construction of transportation infrastructure, and the finalization of export contracts.

Regarding this volume, the company stated verbatim to the markets that Argentina constitutes "the largest single component of Harbour's 2C resources and an important strategic opportunity for the future replacement of reserves" across its entire global portfolio.

The British firm's territorial deployment is structured on three pillars:

Contract signed to sell gas to Europe

The monetization of these unconventional resources already has closed commercial channels. Harbour Energy confirmed to its shareholders that in December 2025 it signed a preliminary agreement with the German company SEFE , which committed to purchasing approximately 80% of the LNG supplied by the first liquefaction vessel that will operate off the coast of Río Negro.

Corporate confession regarding the violation of the Pino Solanas Law

The data, balance sheets, and projections published by Harbour Energy serve as direct, publicly available documentary evidence. While locally the German company Wintershall Dea was used to circumvent the sanctions of National Law No. 26,659 ("Pino Solanas Law") , the London-based firm informs its shareholders directly, without intermediaries, that the gas assets in the Tierra del Fuego sea and the unconventional deposits in Neuquén belong to its business portfolio.

The public admission of these profits and licenses in continental territory consolidates the picture denounced before the Federal Court: a company disqualified for carrying out illegal drilling in the Malvinas basin under concessions from the British colonial occupation today finances its profitability in international markets by exploiting the Argentine subsoil and projecting the monetization of its strategic resources for 99 years.

Fountain:

Harbour Energy