Tierra del Fuego province denounced on Monday the docking of a British oil tanker at the port of Ushuaia, the provincial capital, after the national government authorized it.
The Ushuaia port was taken over by the national government’s Ports and Navigation National Agency in January, meaning the agency now controls all operations and the province has lost control of the port.
The Tierra del Fuego government has “questioned the legality” of the takeover.
In a statement, the province condemned the presence of the British ship VS Promise over the UK’s “illegal occupation” of the Malvinas Islands, which are part of the province’s territory.
The government of Tierra del Fuego, Antarctica, and the South Atlantic Islands — the province’s full name — “condemns and energetically rejects” the ship’s presence at the Ushuaia port, it read.
“It is unacceptable that, while the United Kingdom continues its illegitimate occupation of an integral part of the territory of Tierra del Fuego — the Malvinas Islands, South Georgia, the South Sandwich Islands, and the corresponding maritime and insular areas — a British-flagged vessel operates in the port of the capital of the province to which those territories belong in accordance with the National Constitution and the Provincial Constitution,” said the statement.
The provincial government added that the incident is “even worse” because, in January, national authorities “justified the takeover of the Ushuaia port by invoking its status as a strategic asset and the need to safeguard sovereignty and national interests in the South Atlantic.”
The Herald reached out to the economy ministry — which is in charge of the ports agency — for comment.
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Takeover of the Ushuaia port
“The port was taken over on the grounds of sovereignty, and once it was under intervention, they made decisions that are incompatible with the sovereign sensibilities required by our territory and the Ushuaia port in particular,” the province stated.
In January, the national government, led by President Javier Milei, took over the port following an audit carried out in October 2025, which detected “financial irregularities, embezzlement, and operational and security risks due to infrastructure deficiencies,” a communiqué released at the time said.
While the national government said that Governor Gustavo Melella had “admitted to the shortcomings” detected in the audits, the Tierra del Fuego administration condemned the takeover at the time, saying there were “no objective reasons” for the move and that the port was operating normally until then.
In the statement published on Monday, the province stressed that Ushuaia “is a strategic location of the utmost importance for Argentina” due to its location facing the South Atlantic and its proximity to Antarctica.
“Any decisions made regarding its port cannot ignore this geographical, constitutional, and geopolitical reality,” they said.
The local government demanded that the national authorities publicly explain under what political, strategic, and administrative grounds they authorized the British ship to dock at the port, taking into account that the UK is “illegally occupying part of the provincial territory.”
Editorial disclaimer: Although the UK refers to the territory as the “Falkland Islands,” Argentina strongly contests this name. The Buenos Aires Herald uses “Malvinas” to refer to the islands.
