Seizing the gas fields

last updated 8 January 2015

La Paz, Bolivia

President Evo Morales announced this week that he was nationalizing the country’s natural gas industry. Morales, a Socialist elected in a landslide late last year, told energy companies, including British Petroleum and France’s Total, that they had six months to turn over their production operations to the government. He also ordered the military to occupy the natural gas fields. “The time has come, the awaited day, a historic day in which Bolivia retakes absolute control of our natural resources,” Morales declared. One oil executive said that while companies had expected Morales to assert a greater government role, they were surprised that he was moving toward “total nationalization.”