22-09-00 Draft oil and natural gas legislation aimed at enshrining decrees protecting both investment and oil companies operating in Argentina's upstream has become the new epicentre of scandal in Argentina's Senate.
Silvia Sapag, a member of the non-aligned, provincial Neuquen Popular Movement party told a federal judge that Peronist lawmaker Emilio Cantarero had sought her support in a money-for-votes scheme. Cantarero was recently the centre of allegations in another vote-buying scheme to pass hotly debated labour legislation.
Cantarero, whose chairs the Senate's Energy and Fuels Commission, has proposed that oil and natural gas production concessions be extended 10 years or more. These concessions include highly prized properties belonging to the Latin Iberian oil group Repsol-YPF SA.

A spokesman at the company confirmed that officials from Repsol YPF had expressed concern to Neuquen Governor Jorge Sobisch over the extension of the concessions, saying that the company's investments could be shifted to other Latin oil provinces if the extensions weren't granted.
Repsol YPF has denied any inappropriate activities in seeking the extension of a production contract for its Loma de La Lata field, or for the passage of an oil bill. The Loma de La Lata field is considered to be the company's Argentine jewel-in-the-crown. Loma is located in the Neuquen sedimentary basin, host to almost half of Argentina's oil and natural gas reserves.
The Alliance government-backed oil law is set to be debated in Congress soon. But the chairman of the lower house's Energy and Fuels Commission, Ricardo Calo, said no date has been set. Argentina's oil industry has been calling for passage of legislation since the sector was deregulated in the early 1990s under the government of former president Carlos Menem.