Secret deposits and expired bottles: gas liberation unleashed a lack of oversight

The alarm reached justice through the Argentine Federal Chamber of Manufacturers, Distributors and Manufacturers of Liquefied Gas and Its Components (Cafadigas), which includes a large part of the official chain and is headed by Dario Simonetti. “They amended the law to make business more competitive and to allow new players to enter, but the effect was negative,” the chamber president said in an interview with PERFIL.

In an action declaring unconstitutionality, the entity asserts that the decree dismantled from day to day the control mechanisms governing a flammable and essential product for millions of homes without gas through the network, and that the regulatory vacuum has enabled a “lack of control” that enables possible accidents, a scenario already seen in the territory.

At the same time as the judicial presentation, the Chamber began documenting a map of violations extending throughout Greater Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires suburbs, the interior of the province, and other jurisdictions such as Corrientes Province. In each file a similar scene is repeated: expired bottles, untraceable cylinders, improvised stocks in private homes, operators who entered the business without registration or technical inspection.

The context makes the issue even more sensitive: on Friday, November 14, a terrible explosion in the industrial zone of Ezeiza caused a fire that affected several factories and led to a major fire that affected several factories in the so-called “Sabjazeni Industrial Zone”.

“47% use bottles, the rest use natural gas. The safety and hygiene auditor told us that for natural gas there are four thousand inspectors. For a bottle, there are not even 7. Who controls? Who controls the sale to illegal companies? That is the danger, for the population. It is not just a house blowing up, there are terrible misfortunes, but will we wait until this is legalized?”, Simonetti said.

From DNU to lack of control. Until the signing of DNU 446/25 and Resolution 833/2023, which changes the sector and amends Law 26.020 that established the regulatory system for the manufacture and marketing of LPG, bottled LPG activity passed through a network of technical decisions, records, periodic inspections and safety standards that reached the entire chain: container manufacturers, retail plants, warehouses, transport fleets and ports. These requirements involve additional costs, but they also set a safety minimum for how the flammable product is packaged, stored, and distributed.

With deregulation, much of this structure has become unclear. The decree sought to “liberalize” the sector and enable full competition, in line with other measures of the Miley administration. In practice, Cavadigas asserts that this movement left a gap that the state did not replace with any alternative system and that the absence of controls was quickly filled by informal operators.

They in the chamber stress that bottled gas does not function as a common commodity market, because it combines strategic inputs for the most vulnerable sectors with a product that requires strict security protocols. “Selling soft drinks is not the same as selling bottles,” they point out in the sector whenever they explain why they consider the decree was “blind liberalization.”

The judicial presentation itself highlights that the state has abdicated its role as supervisor in an area that inherently requires intervention: licensing, audits, valve reviews, periodic hydraulic tests, warehouse monitoring and transportation of dangerous goods. They warn that without this framework, the door opens for anyone to buy and resell bottles without proving technical knowledge or minimum safety conditions.

Threat of dumping. Faced with this scenario, Kavadigas decided to take the dispute to court. The declaration procedure of unconstitutionality brought by the Chamber refers directly against the DNU that liberated the bottled gas and asks the justice to declare the invalidity of those provisions that dismantled the system of control over the activity.

The argument has several levels. The first is legal: The entity asserts that the decree raised issues that should be discussed by Congress and that it touched on an area that requires specific legislative treatment. The second is technical: the document lists the standards, decisions and instructions that set minimum standards and which lost their validity or were left in limbo after the DNU.

The Chamber warns that the government, by completely deregulating activity and abolishing control over operators, has created conditions of unfair competition between companies that continue to comply with technical requirements and new players that operate below those costs. In effect, an internal dumping scenario has been created: retail sells to informal distributors at a dumped price, and those in turn sell at a cheaper price because they do not pay licenses, do not perform periodic inspections, do not maintain organized fleets, and do not invest in secure warehouses.

The industry estimates that the continuation of the scheme could lead to the closure of retail factories and warehousing centres, with a direct impact on formal employment. In Cavadijas, they estimate that about 3,500 direct jobs linked to the LNG chain could be at risk if competition from underground operators increases.

“Dumping is when two or three companies remain running the market and then charge what they want. How can you compete? By putting more producing companies. Here it is the opposite. Where there is no competition, prices are always very high. The state must set minimum and maximum prices to ensure security,” President Kavadijas said.

Trout deposits and expired bottles. The regional dimension of the problem is clearly visible in the package of complaints promoted by Cavadegas in the municipalities of the province of Buenos Aires and in Corrientes. Each file collects minutes, photographs and reports prepared by local inspection areas, civil defense or security, and they all agree on one point: after the DNU, the presence of operators who do not appear in official records has increased.

In the suburbs of Buenos Aires, outbreaks are doubling. In Moreno, for example, inspectors found a point of sale operating on the ground floor of a home, with dozens of jugs stored next to combustible materials and without adequate ventilation. The bottles had no documentary support or visual testimonials. In San Miguel, trucks were discovered transporting cylinders without any identification, without fire extinguishers, and without a license to carry dangerous loads.

In Tigray, the chamber’s complaint describes a “camouflaged” warehouse in a residential area, where more than a hundred containers were stored in a place that had no emergency exits or fire-fighting systems. In Navarro and Roque Pérez, reports speak of companies that began selling bottles without being part of the official circuit, with cylinders of unknown origin and without monitoring their weight to the public.

The scene is repeated inside Buenos Aires. In Junin, inspectors confiscated bottles that had not been revalidated for more than a decade and without evidence of hydraulic testing. In Canuelas, it was revealed that an industrial warehouse was being used as a secret storage for bottled gas, without obtaining a specific license for this purpose. In Paradero, photos show rows of jugs with signs of corrosion, peeling paint and damaged valves waiting to be marketed.

The map is completed with complaints in Corrientes, where it was observed that unaccredited distributors enter bottles without documentation, outside the official departments.

The government’s defense of liberation. The judicial presentation of Cavadegas and the map of municipal complaints opened a new chapter in the debate on deregulation. Up to this point, the government has defended unified national unity, arguing that competition tends to improve prices and efficiency. This was stated by PERFIL from Casa Rosada, while the Ministry of Energy denied the risks resulting from deregulation. On the other hand, the Chamber states that bottled gas cannot be treated as just another element of retail trade, because it involves public safety, user protection and state responsibility.