After the recession triggered by the Argentine economic crisis (1999-2002), Argentina's energy demands grew quickly as industry recovered, but extraction and transportation of natural gas, a cheap and relatively abundant fossil fuel, did not match the surge.
At this point, barely emerging from the seasonal low demand caused by summer, many industrial facilities and power plants started suffering intermittent cuts in their supply of natural gas.
As winter approached, the Argentine government announced that it would restrict natural gas exports in order to preserve the supply for internal consumption, both domestic and industrial, in compliance with the Hydrocarbons Law.
Moreover, some people and organizations in Bolivia have expressed strong disagreement about the idea of exporting gas, calling the energy crisis "a fiction".
As a response to the 2001 economic crisis, electricity tariffs were converted to the Argentine peso and frozen in January 2002 through the Public Emergency and Exchange Regime Law.
Nevertheless, the national government even tried to profit from the crisis by creating a new oil company, Enarsa, with 53% of state control and full exploitation rights over offshore areas.
As 2004 passed with no major disruptions, some people claimed that the so-called "energy crisis" had in fact turned out a minor complication, inflated by the government and the media.
Analysts and officials, such as former President of Uruguay Jorge Batlle, have remarked that a full-fledged protocol for energetic integration of Mercosur should be outlined and brought into action as soon as possible to coordinate energy production and distribution in the region.