Bolivia Nationalizes Natural Gas Industry
Bolivia’s President Evo Morales decreed the nationalization of the country’s natural gas industry today, following through on an election pledge to increase control over the energy industry.
Under the decision, he ordered foreign firms to send production to a state company for sales and industrialization, and said that the state will also recover Bolivian hydrocarbons companies that were privatized in the 1990’s, with the state taking over shares that are in the hands of foreign companies and of semi-public Bolivian entities, according to an Associated Press report based on Mr. Morales’s speech, which was delivered at the country’s San Alberto gas and oil field.
He also ordered the military to occupy the natural gas fields, the A.P. said.
“The time has come, the awaited day, a historic day in which Bolivia retakes absolute control of our natural resources,” Mr. Morales said from the facility, which is operated by Petrobras of Brazil in association with Repsol-YPF of Spain, the A.P. said.
The move highlights a regional trend in Latin America of a struggle over who controls energy resources. Protesters in Bolivia have in the past called for the outright expropriation of private gas installations operated by British Gas, Repsol, and Petrobras. Such protests over energy policy have weakened or forced out of power a number of presidents in Bolivia, which has South America’s second largest natural gas reserves.
In the past, Mr. Morales has raised concerns in the United States and Europe with his plans to increase government control of the energy industry, and with his pledges to decriminalize the cultivation of coca, the plant used to make cocaine.
Mr. Morales warned that companies that rejected the decree would have to leave Bolivia.
He said all the companies must turn their production over to the state’s Yacimientos Petroliferos Fiscales Bolivianos, which was privatized in 1996 and 1997, it reported.
nytimes.com
They never fail to put th coca part in…