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.”
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
-
Zimbabwe’s driving crisisUnder the Radar Southern African nation is experiencing a ‘public health disaster’ with one of the highest road fatality rates in the world
-
The Mint’s 250th anniversary coins face a whitewashing controversyThe Explainer The designs omitted several notable moments for civil rights and women’s rights
-
‘If regulators nix the rail merger, supply chain inefficiency will persist’Instant Opinion Opinion, comment and editorials of the day
