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Economy & Business - June 2005

GAS: The Bolivian conundrum

The discovery of strategically important reserves of natural gas a couple of years ago at Tarija, in southern Bolivia, triggered political and economic ambitions which have wracked the country more or less ever since. The more prosperous eastern part of Bolivia, through which the gas will have to flow to join the pipeline network, wants the gas to remain as a commodity and be exported to northern hemisphere markets, most probably the west coast of the US. The west coast has already run short of power and with US natural gas supplies waning, it will have to import more gas. The poorer, largely indigenous, highlanders from the west of Bolivia have more radical ideas: they want to use the gas as a feedstock for a new petrochemicals industry and to power the industrialisation of the country. Their models, though they may not know it, are Bahrain and Qatar.

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