Bolivia, the linchpin of gas supplies to the southern half of Latin America, is struggling to secure long-term investment for its hydrocarbons sector amid questions over its reliability as a supplier and uncertainty over demand from export markets.
Evo Morales, the country’s popular leftist president who faces a presidential election in December, travelled to Russia this week to sign an agreement with Gazprom, the state gas monopoly, to develop Bolivia’s gas reserves until 2030.
The government estimates the Gazprom agreement, which includes a joint project with Total of France, will be worth $3bn (€2.3bn, £2bn). It says Venezuela and Yacimientos Petroliferos Fiscales Bolivianos (YPFB), Bolivia’s state-owned gas company, will together invest a further $240m.
The fact that Bolivia has to go so far abroad highlights the damage it did by nationalising its energy industry in 2006, driving away technically able international companies with a proven ability to raise funds.
Friday, February 20, 2009
Financial Times: Bolivia pays a high price for nationalisation
The financial Times has an article detailing how badly Bolivia's nationalization of the hydrocarbon industry has worked. This on top of the biggest scandal in the history of YPFB that just broke open shows the enormous price paid by the Morales governments ideologically-inspired policies.
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Hey, if you're interested in U.S.-Latin American affairs, you should really check out the new NACLA Report: Legacies of Revolution in the 21st Century – which is out now.
Here's an excerpt of the description:
Motivated by the 50th anniversary of the Cuban Revolution, and the fact that it has been nearly a century since the Mexican Revolution, 50 years since the National Revolution in Bolivia, 30 years after Nicaragua, and 10 years of Bolivarian Revolution; the March/April 2009 issue of the NACLA Report on the Americas titled: “Revolutionary Legacies in the 21st Century”; examines the enduring legacies of revolution in Latin America.
The March/April NACLA Report offers reflections on the notion of patria in the Castro’s vision of the Cuban Revolution, Mexico’s tensions over its revolutionary past, Ortega’s betrayal of the Sandinista revolution, the revolutionary imagination in Venezuela and much more from a select group of academics, authors and analysts.
You can browse the new issue online – http://www.nacla.org/currentissue
Also if you want,
Subscribe to NACLA Report on the Americas – https://nacla.org/nacla/articles/subscribe!
NACLA Report on the Americas has been published for the last 41 years by the North American Congress on Latin America, an independent nonprofit institution dedicated to analyzing political, social, and economic trends in Latin America and the Caribbean, as well as U.S. policy in the region.
Find out more about NACLA - nacla.org
Hope this information was useful, enjoy!
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