It Can Happen, but will it ever happen here?

international | rights, freedoms and repression | other press

Sunday December 03, 2006 20:11

by Bolivia watcher

Bolivia nationalizes natural gas

Everybody wins. The people of Bolivia now have a share in the profits of their own natural resources. The President is now more popular, having championed the cause of the ordinary people of his country against rich foreigners and vested interests. The energy companies can now be certain of stability, and in the long run they will still make millions.

It's not magic, it's just the application of political sense and good judgement. Will we ever see it in this country?

President of Bolivia Evo Morales [right]

The Associated Press December 3, 2006, 1:06PM EST text size: TT

Bolivia nationalizes natural gas

By DAN KEANE

LA PAZ, Bolivia

President Evo Morales signed into law Sunday contracts giving the government control over foreign energy companies' operations, completing a process begun May 1 with the nationalization of Bolivia's petroleum industry.

The deals, signed by the companies last month, also grant Morales' government a majority share of the foreign companies' revenues generated in Bolivia. Companies that signed contracts include Brazilian state energy giant Petroleo Brasileiro SA (Petrobras), Spanish-Argentine Repsol YPF, France's Total SA, and British Gas, a unit of BG Group PLC.

Morales also announced Sunday that Royal Dutch Shell PLC had agreed to transfer to his government majority control of its Bolivian subsidiary Transredes, which operates the country's largest network of gas pipelines.

Bolivia's natural gas reserves are South America's largest after Venezuela's.

"We thank the Bolivian people who have struggled to recover their natural resources," Morales said in a signing ceremony at the presidential palace in the capital of La Paz. "We have now completed the first step. This process will continue next year with the recovery of other natural resources benefiting the Bolivian people."

Morales has said he also plans to nationalize Bolivia's mining sector.

Bolivia's first Indian president, Morales has vowed to reverse centuries of dominance by the country's European-descended minority, granting greater political and economic power to the poor indigenous majority.

Morales recently returned from a trip to Nigeria, which like Bolivia remains bitterly poor despite its vast petroleum reserves. On Sunday he said he hoped that nationalization initiatives similar to his own might lift oil-rich African nations from poverty.

"If we want to free ourselves as a people, if we want to resolve our social and economic problems, we must both liberate human beings and liberate their economies -- their natural resources, especially," Morales said. "Only then will there be justice and equality."

The contracts signed by the president Sunday were ratified by Bolivia's Senate in a hastily called session Tuesday night, during which lawmakers from Morales' Movement Toward Socialism party also pushed through a sweeping land-reform bill and an open-ended military cooperation pact with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

The session ended a boycott by conservative lawmakers who intended to block Morales' reforms. But opposition leaders have questioned the legality of the session, in which assistants of two absent senators were called in to vote.

Completion of oil and natural gas nationalization has given Morales a sizable political boost. A poll published this week in the Bolivian newspaper La Razon found Morales' approval rating leaping to 67 percent in November from a low of 50 percent in October.

The poll of 1,019 residents in Bolivia's four largest cities was conducted Nov. 13-20 and had a margin of error of 3 percent points.