Sources close to the Buenos Aires delegation in Tierra del Fuego state that Governor Gustavo Melella has been conducting "two high-level negotiations" for several days; one with China and the other with Russia . With China, the goal is to launch "as quickly as possible" the industrialization of the province's natural gas through "a petrochemical company." And secondly, to incorporate the Russian giant Gazprom into a partnership with Terra Ignis (the Tierra del Fuego state oil company) for the recovery of the fields abandoned by YPF and, with it, develop unexploited conventional areas or fields in the central and northern regions of Tierra del Fuego.
Governor Melella's political decision, as well as his executive action, which has not yet been made public, is taking place amid a complex international situation . First, as a consequence of the growing military escalation of the war between Russia and NATO on Ukrainian territory, and second, due to the global tariff measures that Donald Trump began applying to most countries around the world on April 2, which have a minimum tariff of 10 percent in general terms, up to 145 percent applied to imports of Chinese products arriving in the US. Added to this is the unconditional and irrational alignment of Argentine President Javier Milei's administration with Trump's economic, financial, and expansionist US policies .
Perhaps this entire negotiation, which has already begun to be discussed in recent hours, is driven by the relationship that the Melella government continued to maintain with the member states of the BRICS group , lasting beyond the withdrawal of the international political and economic leader from emerging countries, decreed by Milei days after assuming the leadership of the country.
In any case, the project for the industrialization of Tierra del Fuego's hydrocarbons, in association with or under concession from Chinese and Russian companies and technology, will not escape the tensions that involve the main economic and military blocs of the planet. Even more so, President Javier Milei has involved the United States in Argentina's Antarctic development project in Ushuaia through the creation of an Integrated Naval Base; and the head of the Southern Command, Admiral Alvin Holsey, has publicly expressed his desire to establish an operations and supply base in the capital of Tierra del Fuego for nuclear submarines positioned both in the Atlantic and the South Pacific.