Michael P. writes:
Is this a win?
Foreign Firms Bow to Bolivia Energy Nationalization
By REUTERS
Published: October 29, 2006
LA PAZ, Bolivia ( Reuters) - Bolivia's leftist president, Evo Morales,
took a key
step forward in his bold plan to nationalize the country's gas and oil
industries on
Sunday after foreign energy companies agreed to operate in the country
under state
control.....
Thanks for bringing this back.
So far it seems to be largely going the way we discussed in May. Despite
the press talk at the time, Pen-l seemed to agree that Morales was
attempting neither a big political break (such as "true" nationalization)
nor a complete cave-in (like his predecessors). That moved things towards
closed room negotiations where assessing the full impact of the compromise
requires expertise and access to the specifics.
Both sides are claiming victory, although the Lat Am based companies are
letting Morales have more of the headlines as per above (see below for a
bit of "spin" from the other side). We don't yet have enough of the
specifics to guess just how well Morales did. Also big parts are still to
be negotiated -- the price to be paid for exported gas (which is important
to Brazil), the price to be paid for the stock Bolivia will purchase, and
the refineries that provide all of Bolivia's domestic petroleum products.
The only "bottom line" estimates the government has given out was Morales'
claim that Bolivia will get $1 billion "more" from gas this year and $4
billion more p/y by 2010 (per the article cited by Michael). But other
articles point out that this includes a major deal signed 2 weeks ago with
Argentina to quadruple their gas imports (and we don't know what base
Morales is using to calculate $1 billion "more").
[Note: the article also doesn't mention the separate exploitation and
development deals that were signed 3 days ago with Total (France) and
Occidental Petroleum (Republican Party). Of course these are big players
from big countries. I don't know how the prior timing or separate nature
of these deals fit into the picture of yesterday's agreement with Petrobas
(Brazil), Repsol (Spain), and the 5 smaller companies.]
Paul
-----------------------------
BritishGas says new Bolivia contracts as profitable as old
http://business.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=1601562006
Brazil satisfied with deal for Bolivian gas, Intl Herald Tribune
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2006/10/29/business/LA_FIN_Brazil_Bolivia_Gas.php
