The British colonial enclave's strategy to consolidate its infrastructure in the South Atlantic has opened a new avenue of regional tension involving Uruguay and directly jeopardizing Argentina's interests . According to an exhaustive journalistic investigation published by elDiarioAR , the British government has begun preliminary technical work for the installation of an approximately 2,000-kilometer-long submarine telecommunications cable , designed to link Uruguayan territory with the Malvina Islands.

The project, with an estimated cost of USD 120 million according to the specialized portal Open Malvinas , seeks to break the digital isolation of the archipelago and ensure high-capacity bandwidth, vital not only for the island population but primarily to provide technical, data and monitoring support to the Sea Lion oil megaproject.

The Fugro Supporter route: Mare Harbour and the port of Montevideo

The operation came to light through the nautical tracking of the geological and marine data research vessel Fugro Supporter , which is Dutch-flagged and owned by Dutch capital:

Fugro itself formally confirmed its activity in the waters of the islands through an official statement issued last Friday, after being mentioned in dispatches from the US financial agency REDD.

The contractor's alibi and the alarm in Vaca Muerta

The confirmation of Fugro 's actions triggered alarm bells at the San Martín Palace and YPF offices. The Dutch company is a fundamental technical link in Argentina's hydrocarbon infrastructure on the continent.

1.   Contracts in Río Negro: In 2025, Fugro carried out the coastal soil studies for the VMOS oil pipeline, the key project promoted by YPF together with the main producers of Vaca Muerta to export unconventional crude through the San Matías Gulf.

2.   The LNG project: The firm was shortlisted to analyze the seabed where the floating liquefaction units destined for the export of liquefied natural gas (LNG) will be located, an alliance that the national oil company is negotiating together with the international operators Eni and ADNOC.

Faced with the possibility of being subject to the disqualifications of Law 26,659 and the sanctions announced after Decree 868/2026, Fugro issued a statement assuring that her tasks "were not related in any way to hydrocarbon activity" and that they were strictly limited to telecommunications studies, promising to respect the Argentine regulatory framework.

However, in government and energy sector offices, the weakness of the argument is noted: the forecast of extracting between 50,000 and 150,000 barrels of crude oil per day in the Malvinas will double the logistical and demographic demand of the enclave, inevitably requiring the digital fiber optic highway that Fugro is surveying on the seabed.

Diplomacy in check: silence in Montevideo and maneuvers in the Foreign Ministry

Foreign Minister Pablo Quirno has been aware of the British maneuver since at least last week. According to elDiarioAR , after receiving complaints from YPF and the Vaca Muerta operators about the impact that sanctions against Fugro or Bluewater would have on the national export infrastructure, the Foreign Ministry is working to downplay the punitive scope announced by Javier Milei on national television.

For its part, the Uruguayan Foreign Ministry stated that it had not been formally notified of the initiative, while the Foreign Office in London declined to comment.

The use of Montevideo as a logistical base to support a $120 million British project evokes historical precedents: between 1915 and 1919, an underwater telegraph line operated between the islands and the Uruguayan coast . However, in the current geopolitical landscape, providing port services to a vessel exploring the Malvina Islands seabed directly contradicts the regional solidarity commitments ratified by Mercosur, Unasur, and Celac in support of Argentina's legitimate and imprescriptible sovereign rights over the Malvina Islands, South Georgia, the South Sandwich Islands, and the corresponding maritime and insular spaces.

Fountain:

elDiarioAr