MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Bolivia, Uruguay invite Paraguay to join gas pipeline Project

Bolivian President Evo Morales and Uruguayan counterpart Tabare Vazquez agreed here Monday to consider building a natural gas pipeline linking their respective countries and invited Paraguay to join the project.

The pact appeared in a joint declaration signed by the two socialist heads of state to conclude Vazquez's visit to Bolivia.

Vazquez and Morales picked up on the memorandum of understanding set forth between their nations in 2004 and instructed their energy ministers to analyze the possibility of building a pipeline and combined-cycle gas-fired power plants in Uruguay.

Uruguayan Industry, Energy and Mining Minister Jorge Lepra said that his country needs natural gas to supplement what has become an erratic supply of the fuel from Argentina.

"It so happens that we often have cuts in the Argentine supply, due to which many factories have gone to (using) wood and fuel oil" to generate electricity, he said. Bolivian Hydrocarbons Minister Andres Soliz said that the idea of extending a gas pipeline to Uruguay would be difficult because the two countries do not share a common border and, therefore, the project would have to pass through Argentine territory.

"The most likely thing is that we'll have to increase the volume of gas exports to Argentina and from there supply Uruguay and Paraguay," he said.

Bolivia currently exports 7.2 million cubic meters (253 million cubic feet) of gas and, for the past two years, Buenos Aires and Argentine petroleum firms have been studying the construction of a conduit to boost the supply of the fuel from the neighboring Andean nation.

Bolivia has estimated reserves of 48 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, most of it in southeastern fields near its border with Argentina and Paraguay.

Caracas, Buenos Aires and Brasilia have agreed to spend $9 million to study the feasibility of a pipeline that would carry Venezuela's natural gas - it has even bigger reserves than Bolivia - some 8,000 kilometers (nearly 5,000 miles) across Brazil to Argentina.

Though Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez denies the prospective great southern pipeline represents an attempt to steal markets from Bolivia, La Paz's Soliz has expressed concerns that the conduit, if built, would do just that.

After concluding his talks with Morales, Vazquez left Bolivia for Venezuela, the second stop on a tour that later will take him to Brazil and Paraguay