Solid performers that buck the trend
YPF is Argentina's largest company and the 12th-largest publicly traded oil and gas firm in the world. Its acquired companies stretch across Latin America and into Indonesia and the US. Long admired for its management skills, YPF's response to the recent drop in oil prices has underlined its flexibility. "There is a big gap between YPF and the next best," says Mary Quinn, analyst at Credit Suisse First Boston.
Privatized in 1993, YPF still has the biggest share of the Argentine oil and gas market. It is estimated that it controls 52% of Argentina's crude-oil production and 60% of total gas sales in the country. Worldwide, proven reserves that it controls are estimated to have been 1.4 billion barrels of crude oil and 9,736 billion cubic feet of gas at the beginning of 1997.
Much of the company's growth strategy focuses on taking advantage of opportunities that have followed energy company privatizations, for example in Peru and Bolivia. In October, for example, YPF formed a joint venture with Petrobrás, Brazil's state-owned integrated oil and gas company. YPF recently launched its first service station branded with the YPF name in Rio de Janeiro.