Tender to Award Offshore Exploration Permit

By means of Decree 590/206, published in the Official Gazette on July 15, 2026, the Executive Branch instructed the Secretariat of Energy to call an international public tender to award an exploration permit for the area CAN_200. This area is in the Northern Argentine Basin, in the offshore Argentine continental platform under national jurisdiction and, as stated in the recitals of the Decree, covers approximately 5,000 km².

This tender results from an expression of interest that the company CHALLENGER ENERGY GROUP PLC submitted regarding the area, in accordance with article 46 of the Hydrocarbons Law 17319, as amended (LHC). This provision establishes that interested parties may submit proposals to the application authority specifying the general aspects, locations, and areas required for the development of the area and that, if the proposal is deemed to be in the national interest, the authority will implement the competitive bidding processes to grant permits and concessions. The provision establishes that the proposing entity must be given preference under equal award conditions.

The Decree instructs the Secretariat of Energy to take the necessary steps to carry out the bidding process, which includes approving the terms and conditions, calling for bids, and granting the exploration permit and any subsequent exploitation concession.

It also provides that the exploration permit and any subsequent exploitation concession must include the payment of royalties in accordance with the LHC and authorizes including clauses that provide for the jurisdiction of international arbitral tribunals seated in a country that is a party to the 1958 Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards (New York Convention). The Decree states that such provision does not imply a waiver of immunity from execution with respect to the assets expressly listed in it, in accordance with the legal framework governing immunities matters.

Among the relevant background in offshore exploration is the International Offshore Public Tender 1 (Round 1), carried out in 2019, through which exploration permits were awarded in various areas of the Argentine continental platform in the Northern Argentina (CAN), Western Malvinas (MLO), and Austral Marina (AUS) basins (for more information on that process, please refer to our article published on November 28, 2018). Unlike that call for bids, which covered multiple offshore blocks currently in the exploration phase and led to an increase in offshore activity in Argentina, the tender established by this decree has a more limited scope, as it refers exclusively to the CAN_200 area.