Argentina - closing the deal

Argentina will spend 2017 trying to come good on its upstream promise

The honeymoon is over for Argentina's president, Mauricio Macri. In 2016, the new president was given plenty of slack; a recognition of the mess he inherited and the wide-ranging reforms needed. In 2017, Macri and his team of technocrats will need to show results: that means getting the promising energy sector, especially shale development, on track and winning back investors. Market-pricing reforms should move ahead in 2017. Oil producers in Argentina were largely shielded from the collapse in international crude prices, as the government propped prices up well above international levels - most recently at $67 a barrel. That will have to start moving down towards the prevailing internationa