Falklands oil unleashes a new battle between Buenos Aires and London

LondonJust when it seemed that the episode of the football World Cup in which, after the semifinal between Argentina and England, the players of the albiceleste displayed a banner with the inscription "Las Malvinas son argentinas" had been buried in the archives, London and Buenos Aires have returned to the fray over the archipelago. On this occasion, due to its energy resources.

The Argentine government has denounced the United Kingdom this week before the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, based in Hamburg, for granting permits to two oil companies to drill the field known as Sea Lion, in the northern basin of the islands, about 220 kilometers from the coast. The hydrocarbons of the Sea Lion add a material incentive to a historical conflict that dates back to 1833.

Milei's government wants to stop its exploitation. The project, which plans to extract 180,000 barrels per day at the moment of peak production in 2030, is driven by the Israeli company Navitas Petroleum and the British company Rockhopper Exploration. The Casa Rosada considers this activity and the licenses issued by London to be illegal. Downing Street, on the other hand, defends their legality. All this culminates a period of growing tension that has been dragging on since the beginning of September around the territory, inhabited by some 3,600 Falklanders. This territory was the scene, in 1982, of the war between the Argentina of the military dictatorship of Leopoldo Galtieri and the conservative government of Margaret Thatcher.

Among the chess moves that have taken place lately, at the beginning of October, military exercises were carried out that had not been previously announced, as revealed by The Times this week. About 150 British paratroopers and a group of local reservists took part. The goal of the maneuvers was to reconquer the islands after a hypothetical Argentine invasion: the same scenario of 1982, which ended in a seventy-four-day war and the death of 907 people.

Gateway to Antarctica

To reaffirm the islanders' will to remain under the Union Jack and recall the ties with London, the speaker of the legislative assembly, Jack Ford, has visited the United Kingdom over the last two weeks. He has also held contacts with both government officials and Tory leaders: "The growing pressure that Argentina is exerting on us is completely unwanted," he said Wednesday on the BBC4 program Today. "The government [of Andy Burnham] has repeatedly stated that it is not willing to talk about sovereignty as long as the inhabitants of the islands want to remain British, and we do not see that changing in the near future. We are British and will continue to be so.".

In 2013, the Falkland Islandersheld a referendum on this issue and only three votes, out of the 1,518 cast, rejected the current status as a British Overseas Territory. With this premise as a banner, it is clear that London does not intend to abandon them to their fate. On Monday, October 12, the Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, assured at the Palace of Westminster that he will do "whatever it takes" to keep the Falkland Islands under British sovereignty. A statement he made following the islanders' accusation that Argentina is adopting an attitude of "military intimidation" against the territory.

In the House of Commons, Burnham also explained that he had raised the issue of sovereignty with the President of the United States, Donald Trump, reminding him of the "clear and express will of the inhabitants of the islands to continue being British". Burnham had already referred to this issue in his speech before the United Nations General Assembly at the end of September. In the same forum, however, Javier Milei was more belligerent than usual and recalled his country's historical claim over the Falklands.

Burnham's reference to Trump in the House of Commons was not in vain. At the beginning of September, the President of the United States, who has Javier Milei as a great ally in an increasingly right-wing South America, he hinted that he could review the traditionally neutral position of the United States on the conflict. In turn, Trump took advantage of the dispute to pressure London over its differences regarding Iran.

Although Washington formally maintains neutrality regarding the sovereignty of the islands, in 1982 the USA under Ronald Reagan offered extensive logistical support to the Iron Lady. This fact evidenced the weight of geostrategic interests in this conflict, which have now multiplied exponentially.

This has been another of the messages that Jack Ford has left in the British capital and which helps to understand the spike in tension between Downing Street and the Casa Rosada. The president of the Falkland Islands Legislative Assembly has reminded the BBC that "the presence in the South Atlantic also brings a series of advantages for the [London] government. It is not just about the Falklands. There are also other British Overseas Territories: South Georgia, the South Sandwich Islands, and the British Antarctic Territory. It is a location of strategic importance, and the presence in this area offers advantages to the armed forces".

This strategic importance lies in the fact that the Falklands are the gateway to Antarctica and an ideal base for the future exploitation of the region's natural resources. Keeping the Union Jack in Port Stanley, the islands' capital, means guaranteeing a presence in the region and the possibility of benefiting from it in the long term.