The Government extended the electrical emergency and aligned it with the gas emergency. The measure was published in the Official Gazette and the exceptional regime that expired this week is extended until December 2027. What were the Executive's arguments to make this determination.
The Government extended the electrical emergency under federal jurisdiction until December 31, 2027 and equated its validity with that already in force for the transportation and distribution of natural gas.
The decision was made official through the Decree of Necessity and Urgency 585/2026, published in the Official Gazette and signed by President Javier Milei together with the members of his cabinet.
According to the Government, the extension is necessary because "the circumstances that motivated" the previous extensions of the emergency, originally declared at the end of 2023, still persist, and because the process of normalization of the electricity market is still under development.
The rule provides for the extension of the emergency declared by Decree 55/2023 and subsequently extended by decrees 1023/2024 and 370/2025.
Specifically, article 1 establishes: "The emergency of the National Energy Sector is extended (...) with regard to the generation, transportation and distribution segments of electrical energy under federal jurisdiction (...) until December 31, 2027."
One of the central arguments of the decision is the need to coordinate the electrical emergency with the one in force for the natural gas transportation and distribution system, which had already been extended until that same date by Decree 49/2026.
In that sense, the Government maintained that there is an "operational and economic interdependence between the electric energy and natural gas systems" and noted that natural gas "constitutes a critical input for the thermal generation of electric energy."
For this reason, it was considered necessary to "equate the terms of validity of both emergency declarations" to "preserve security of supply and the integrated functioning of the national energy system."
The decree also maintains that "the partial improvement of certain sectoral variables does not allow the causes that gave rise to the emergency to be considered overcome."
Among the technical foundations, the Government highlighted that during February 2025 the system registered a maximum demand of 30,257 megawatts and that the available margin was only 4.4%, a level that it considered insufficient to guarantee adequate reserves against contingencies.
He also warned that the generating park presents "a high degree of aging", that the main transformer stations operate with utilization levels greater than 90% and that more than 60% of distribution failures occur in feeders that are more than 25 years old.
Another of the salient points of the extension is the continuity of the normalization process of the Wholesale Electricity Market (MEM). In this sense, the Government recalled that in December 2023 CAMMESA's collectibility rate was "close to 48%", while currently it reaches levels close to "97%".
In any case, he maintained that the recovery still needs to be consolidated and warned that "a reversal in payment discipline could affect the flow of funds managed by CAMMESA, compromise payments to generators, transporters and other market agents, deteriorate investor confidence and recreate financial imbalances that the emergency regime seeks to overcome."
The decree also links the continuity of the emergency with the policy of gradual reduction of subsidies. According to the text, during May 2026 the Seasonal Price (PEST) applied to subsidized residential users represented "approximately 24%" of the energy reference price, which marks "the subsistence of a relevant economic gap that must be addressed in a gradual, predictable and focused manner."
In this framework, the Government stated that it is necessary to coordinate the transition with the Targeted Energy Subsidies regime to "move towards the economic-financial sustainability of the electrical system and progressively reduce dependence on extraordinary contributions from the National Treasury."
In addition, it was warned that if the emergency were not extended, there could be "regulatory discontinuities, delays in the adoption of operational measures, weakening of financial regularization mechanisms, loss of predictability for agents, impact on investment processes and greater risks to the continuity of the public electricity service."
For this reason, the Executive concluded that it is "necessary and urgent to extend the emergency declaration of the National Energy Sector" until December 31, 2027 and considered that the measure will allow "to continue adopting the necessary regulatory, operational, economic, contractual, tariff and infrastructure measures" to guarantee the operation of the electrical system.
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