New Delhi, July 30 -- BUENOS AIRES - When Middle Eastern supply disruptions drove Brent crude north of $100 a barrel last week, the arithmetic for crude traders pointed toward continued scarcity. On Tuesday, Argentina's energy secretariat offered the market a partial offset it had not been pricing in.

Argentina confirmed its highest monthly oil output on record, a milestone the secretariat attributed to the Vaca Muerta shale formation in the Neuquen province of northern Patagonia. The record arrives two and a half years into President Javier Milei's deregulation campaign, which has treated energy export expansion as the most structurally important component of his government's attempt to rebuild Argentina's hard-currency earnings and add...