Repsol to Boost Bolivia Gas Output

[Judi Lynn]

Repsol to Boost Bolivia Gas Output
Source: Dow Jones Newswires
Date: 11/22/2011 14:11

Repsol expects production from Bolivia's Margarita natural gas fields swelling to 14 million cubic meters per day by 2014, up from 3 million cubic meters this year and an expected 9 million cubic meters by April 2012, the company said in a statement Tuesday.

~snip~
Bolivia is currently on a drive to attract foreign investment to develop its potentially large natural-gas reserves after struggling to meet export obligations to Argentina and Brazil in recent years. Those exports are the country's primary source of hard currency.

Bolivia nationalized its oil and gas industry in 2006. Following the nationalization, many exploration and production companies cut back operations or pulled up stakes entirely, severely diminishing Bolivia's ability to boost output.

But now, many are rushing to get back into Bolivia under "service provider" contracts for exploration. Once a company strikes gas, a joint venture that is majority-owned by state oil and gas company YPFB is formed, with the private company expected to recover its exploration costs within five to 10 years, according to YPFB.

More:
http://www.tbpetroleum.com.br/news/see/id/19962/titulo/repsol-to-boost-bolivia-gas-output

[Peace Patriot]

1. "But now, many are rushing to get back into Bolivia...".

In other words, the assholes who tried to crash Bolivia's economy, in order to topple the leftist government, found themselves out in the cold! Now they want back in, and are getting back in, but only if they agree to the terms set by the democratically elected governments--as it should be. (Corporations have no right to do business anywhere without the consent of the people, who grant them charters and contracts and limited rights. They have NO inherent rights.)

A similar thing happened in Venezuela. The key to understanding this is that both governments demanded a fair deal for their country, from foreign corporations that wanted access to their resources. These corporations--in the case of Venezuela, Exxon Mobil was the lead obstructor--are used to walking all over local governments and just stealing the resource. First Venezuela, then Bolivia (and also now, Brazil) elected governments that said, "No! You will not do that! If you want our resource, you are going to pay for schools and health care!"

Venezuela (2002) and Bolivia (2008) both suffered U.S.-backed coup attempts combined with Kissinger-like efforts to "make their economies scream" so that Big Corporations never have to bargain, never to have to pay their dues, never have to obey the law. Exxon Mobil never agreed to Venezuela's terms; they walked out of the talks; but then numerous smaller oil corporations stepped into that void. They got the access!

South America's left has shown that, by foresight and great courage, they CAN get a better deal for their people. HALF of Venezuela's oil revenues now go to social programs and local development. It was 10% before the Chavez government (mostly pocketed by the rich oil elite). Bolivia's Evo Morales has DOUBLED Bolivia's gas revenues and is using Bolivians' share for similar social justice purposes. These countries have learned that THEY have the upper hand if only they dare to exercise their power on behalf of their people. Venezuela did this alone, at first--as the pioneer of social justice and standing up to billion+ dollar transglobal corporations in the region. Now they have been joined in common cause with Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, Uruguay , Paraguay, Peru, Nicaragua and others--all the many new leftist governments--creating collective strength in support of Latin American sovereignty, independence, control of their own resources and economies and the fostering of "south-south" trade and multilateral trade. They are writing the rules, on behalf of their people, and the strength of their democracies--based on long hard civic work on honest elections, and on grass roots organization--enables their governments to do this.

Our Corporate Press calls these leaders--Chavez, Morales and others--"tyrants" because they won't yield to Exxon Mobil & brethren. What a nasty irony this is! Entities like Exxon Mobil need to be dictated to. They need to be curtailed. Indeed, many of them need to be dismantled! And only real democracy is strong enough to do so. We have lost all of our rightful power over these huge corporate entities. South America is going the other way--toward democracy and control of the corporate tyrants.

One other point: This article is misstating what happened between Bolivia and Brazil/Argentina on the natural gas issue. What really happened is that the leftist presidents of Argentina and Brazil intervened, on behalf of the Morales government in Bolivia and the Bolivian people, in the midst of a U.S.-orchestrated white separatist insurrection in Bolivia in late 2008. The white separatists (organized and funded right out of the U.S. embassy) were trying to split Bolivia in two, and take Bolivia's gas resource (located in the eastern, white separatist part of Bolivia) with them. Argentina's and Brazil's leaders told these white separatists that they will not do business with a white separatist state.

It was this U.S.-backed coup attempt that disrupted the country and caused production problems NOT Morales' nationalization of the gas resource. (The white separatists rioted, blew up a pipeline, murdered people, shut down an airport, etc.) South America united in the effort to support the elected government in Bolivia and to hold Bolivia together. It is one of the key events of this century (or of any century, for that matter)--South America uniting to throw off a U.S. coup. It was all about the gas resource and whether or not Bolivians were going to get a fair deal. Bolivian voters overwhelmingly supported Morales on the nationalization of gas and other issues. The U.S., of course, opposed a fair deal for Bolivia, fought against the will of the people of Bolivia and tried to smash up their democracy.

The article attributes power to investors and gas corporations that they did not have in that situation and do not have now. Corporate Press articles often read like "Alice in Wonderland"--where everything is upside, inside out and backwards. It is "the People" who have the power, now, in Bolivia and the many other leftist-run countries in South America. Investors and businesses corporations have to play by democratic rules, by insistence of the people who live there and the common goal of the new leftist leadership of the region is to create a "level playing field" on which corporations have to COMPETE. The ones that are best for the country win.

[Zorro]

2. Can you share some of what you're smokin' with the rest of us?

[Peace Patriot]

4. You buy the "Wall Street" narrative of TB Petroleum? I don't.

It leaves out the most significant events in Bolivia over the last half decade--all to do with the gas reserves, including the election of a hugely popular leftist government, that of Evo Morales, which asserted the Bolivian peoples' right to benefit from this natural resource and the U.S. government's effort to destabilize the country, topple the Morales government and provoke a white separatist grab for power over the gas reserves. It was the U.S. government and the white separatists who interfered with gas production--brutally, with riots and murders--and it was the Morales government, allied with the leftist governments of Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela and others, who RESTORED stability to the country! Stability attracts investors; thus, the investors are back.

The "Wall Street" narrative that Morales nationalized the gas and "investors fled" is inaccurate and, indeed, absurd. That is NOT what happened. First of all, the Bushwhack-instigated worldwide depression hit at the SAME MOMENT (Sept. 2008) that U.S. ambassador Philip Goldberg and the DEA were colluding with the white separatist to destroy Bolivian democracy, split the country in the two and give the fascists control of the gas reserve provinces. In addition to the Bushwhack Depression, investors hesitated because the U.S. was trying to instigate a civil war in Bolivia and that amoral lot (investors) were waiting to see who won. Well, lo and behold, the people of Bolivia and their democracy won--so now the "investors" have to play by democratic rules, instead of expecting a fascist tyranny to hand them unjust profits.

Anyone who doesn't understand this new dynamic in South America--whether "investors" or the CIA-- is missing everything and is bound to fail. The U.S. can no longer guarantee fascist rule to big companies. Democracy is winning in South America and the leaders of this democratic movement are insisting that their people get a better deal, and--guess what, "Wall Street"?--investors are flocking to these countries to take whatever deals are available on terms set by the people who live there!

Corporate Rule is being tamed in South America! That is the upshot of these events. "Wall Street" doesn't want us to know this so they invent self-serving narratives like this one to make everybody think that "Wall Street"'s jungle ethic rules the world.

[Judi Lynn]

3. Looking to refresh our memories of the Pando massacre, found this helpful, familiar material:

A Realigned Bolivian Right: New ‘Democratic’ Destabilizations
Mar 16 2011
Nicole Fabricant
This article first appeared in the January/February 2011 edition of NACLA Report on the Americas.

~snip~
In its bid to weaken the Morales government, the opposition borrowed tactics from the CIA-backed coup of the democratically elected Chilean president Salvador Allende in the early 1970s. As in Chile, the business elites launched civic strikes, refused to ship agricultural products (disproportionately produced in the lowland regions) to urban markets in the western Andean departments, while selling products on the black market at higher prices. Attempting to control regional space through the flow of commodities on the free market, the Confederation of Private Businesses of Bolivia in 2008 called for producers to shut down if the national government refused to comply with their demands.2

The United States was directly and indirectly involved in orchestrating this rebellion, which emboldened politicians in the region. Just as in recent right-wing coups in Latin America—from the 2002 coup attempt against Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez to the 2009 Honduran coup against President Manuel Zelaya—the United States had been fomenting tension and supporting elite projects in “targeted areas,” where new forms of governance pose a threat to free-market capitalism. USAID documents indicate that the Office of Transition Initiatives funded 116 grants totaling almost $4.5 million to enable departmental or regional governments “to operate more strategically” in Bolivia.3 These grants financed a number of the spectacular and festive events that led up to the destabilization campaign, such as the rally against the proposed constitution attended by about a million people at the Christ the Redeemer statue in Santa Cruz. Signs at the rally bearing slogans like “Autonomy = Democracy” abounded, as did U.S. flags, underlining the relationship between the United States and the rebels.

Following these events, the U.S. ambassador to Bolivia, Philip Goldberg, flew to Santa Cruz to meet with Governor Rubén Costa, one of the leaders of the autonomy movement and a primary antagonist of Morales. Immediately after the meeting, Costas ordered an “official” takeover of national government offices in the region. It is therefore reasonably clear that Goldberg signaled U.S. approval for such actions. For this reason, Morales expelled Goldberg on September 10, 2008, declaring him persona non grata for having “conspired against democracy and Bolivia.” Goldberg’s expulsion sparked right-wing violence on the following day, September 11, the 35th anniversary of the overthrow of Allende. This conjuncture of dates and events created a powerful symbolic political connection between Allende’s Chile and Morales’s Bolivia. Shortly thereafter, in the department of Pando, another lowland agro-industrial center where civic elites are aligned with Santa Cruz, paramilitary autonomistas armed with machine guns attacked pro-Morales indigenous organizers near the departmental capital city of Cobija.

The confrontation escalated and resulted in 13 deaths and hundreds of wounded. When these wounded peasants were later transported to hospitals for treatment, autonomistas intercepted the ambulances, pulled out the wounded people, and dragged them into the main plaza of Cobija, where they were publicly tortured with barbed wire.4 The next day, Morales declared a state of siege in Pando and mobilized the army to reclaim the airport, which had been occupied by the regional elites. Army units were also sent to the areas where natural gas pipelines had been seized by autonomistas attempting to cut off the flow of gas to Brazil and Argentina—a crucial source of capital for the Bolivian state. Soon after the Pando massacre, Morales won the 2009 reelection with a record 64% of the vote, and the new constitution was ratified by popular referendum with more than 60% that same year. The Bolivian right, in this moment of victory, appeared to have been defeated.

More:
https://nacla.org/news/realigned-bolivian-right-new-%E2%80%98democratic%E2%80%99-destabilizations

~~~~~

Bolivia: Right-wing push to stop change defeated
Written by Bolivia Rising Sunday, 02 November 2008 11:42
by Bolivia Rising (Fred Fuentes)

~snip~
After three months of intense class struggle, there can be no doubt that the US-backed right-wing opposition to the government of President Evo Morales has suffered three important defeats.The right's offensive to topple Morales, which climaxed with the September 11-12 "civic coup" attempt, has been decisively rolled back by the combined action of the government and social movements.

The government secured a historic vote in its favour with more than 67% endorsing Morales' mandate in a referendum in August, that also revoked the mandate of two opposition prefects. Another opposition prefect was arrested for his role in the coup, and has secured a referendum for the new draft constitution to "refound Bolivia" on the basis of justice for the indigenous majority (see article in this page). More importantly, a strengthen Morales government now counts on an unprecedented alliance of indigenous, peasant and workers' organisations determined to defend their government and the Morales-led "democratic and cultural revolution".

~snip~
The opposition prefects, now grouped together in the National Democratic Coalition (CONALDE), initially opposed the referendums. However, following a series of meetings with US ambassador Phillip Goldberg, they agreed to accept the challenge.

~snip~
After a series of meetings between the US ambassador, US congresspeople and the half moon prefects, it was agreed to enact a plan to destabilise the east, stirring up violence to the point where either the military would be forced to react, causing deaths and Morales' resignation, or creating the justification for some kind of United Nations intervention to "restore stability".

More:
http://www.atlanticfreepress.com/news/1-Opinion/5780-bolivia-right-wing-push-to-stop-change-defeated-.html

~~~~~

The Machine Gun and The Meeting Table: Bolivian Crisis in a New South America
Written by Benjamin Dangl
Tuesday, 16 September 2008 04:48

On Monday, September 15, Bolivian president Evo Morales arrived in Santiago, Chile for an emergency meeting of Latin American leaders that convened to seek a resolution to the recent conflict in Bolivia. Upon his arrival, Morales said, "I have come here to explain to the presidents of South America the civic coup d'etat by Governors in some Bolivian states in recent days. This is a coup in the past few days by the leaders of some provinces, with the takeover of some institutions, the sacking and robbery of some government institutions and attempts to assault the national police and the armed forces."

Morales was arriving from his country where the smoke was still rising from a week of right-wing government opposition violence that left the nation paralyzed, at least 30 people dead, and businesses, government and human rights buildings destroyed. During the same week, Morales declared US ambassador in Bolivia Philip Goldberg a "persona non grata" for "conspiring against democracy" and for his ties to the Bolivian opposition. The recent conflict in Bolivia and the subsequent meeting of presidents raise the questions: What led to this meltdown? Whose side is the Bolivian military on? And what does the Bolivian crisis and regional reaction tell us about the new power bloc of South American nations?

Massacre in Pando

On September 11, in the tropical Bolivian department of Pando, which borders Brazil and Peru, a thousand pro-Morales men, women and children were heading toward Cobija, the department's capital to protest the right wing governor Leopoldo Fernández and his thugs' takeover of the city and airport.

According to press reports and eye witness accounts, when the protesters arrived at a bridge seven kilometers outside the town of Porvenir, they were ambushed by assassins hired and trained by governor Fernández. Snipers in the tree tops shot down on the unarmed campesinos. Shirley Segovia, a Porvenir resident recalled to Bolpress, "We were killed like pigs, with machine guns, with rifles, with shotguns, with revolvers. The campesinos had only brought their teeth, clubs and sling shots, they didn't bring rifles. After the first shots, some fled to the river Tahuamanu, but they were followed and shot at." Others reported being tortured; days later the death toll rose to 30, with dozens wounded and over a hundred still missing. Roberto Tito, a farmer who was present at the conflict, said "This was a massacre of farmers, this is something that we should not allow."

More:
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1478/1/

ETC., ETC.

Thanks for your excellent comments.

[Peace Patriot]

5. And thank you, Judi, for bringing this history forward!

The self-serving, lying, distorted narratives of the Corporate Press, which blackhole virtually all news about the successes--indeed, the fabulous successes--of democracy in South America thus enforce ignorance and "Alice in Wonderland" unreality on our people here, all the better to loot us blind, and, what is even worse, all the better to hijack our tax money and put it to ill purpose--including war--in foreign countries.

The Corporate Press has been lying through their teeth about Bolivia, just as they have been lying through their teeth about Venezuela--the pioneer of the democracy movement in Latin America. Thus, they can come up with this completely distorted picture of Bolivia wherein "investors" bless the country with their "noblesse oblige" money or punish the country by withholding their royal favor because the country nationalized its gas reserves.

This really is "Mad Tea Party" logic straight out of "Alice in Wonderland."

They completely leave out, a) the Bushwhack-instigated worldwide Depression (to enable the rich to get richer) of Sept 2008, in the SAME MONTH as the U.S.-instigated civil war in Bolivia, and b) the victory of democratic forces over that U.S. destabilization effort--one of the most important events in the western hemisphere in the last decade and, indeed, in the last century.

To leave out this epic event, in an analysis of Bolivia's economic prospects, is to black-hole the truth.

In fact, Bolivia bounced back from Great Depression II quicker than almost anybody BECAUSE they have a hugely popular leftist government that nationalized the gas reserves and is committed to social justice, BECAUSE the leftist movement in the region united to stabilize Bolivia and fend off a U.S. coup attempt and BECAUSE of cooperative assistance to Bolivia as a result of the coup attempt (for instance, Brazil, Argentina and others ensuring Bolivia access to the new highway across the continent from Brazil to the Pacific, Chile giving Bolivia access to the sea at long last and Venezuela assisting Bolivia in re-negotiating the gas contracts, thus DOUBLING Bolivia's gas revenues).

These LEFTIST actions were responsible for Bolivia's remarkable 5% economic growth rate--the quickest recovery in the region--and THAT is why Bolivia is attractive to investors.

Talk about the 1% vs the 99%. The Corporate Press leaves out 99% of the truth in its propaganda narratives about Latin America and promotes 1% of the truth--that investors are flocking to Bolivia--as if this were the whole story. But then the Corporate Press speaks only for the 1% of people who have made money during Great Depression II and loathes and ignores the 99% who are the victims of the 1%, most especially when the 99% successfully establish their rights, as they are doing throughout South America. The Corporate Press does not want us to know this.