MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

LatAm Gas Pipeline Begins

The pipeline for transporting natural gas between Colombia and Venezuela got underway Saturday with the welding of two pipes in the presence the president of Colombia, Alvaro Uribe, of Panama, Martin Torrijos, and of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez.

The segment on which construction began Saturday will be 225 kilometers (140 miles) long, 89 (55) of them in Colombian territory and will require an investment of $230 million, to be paid for entirely by Venezuela.

The three presidents wearing hard hats and safety glasses stood watching as welders bonded the seam between the two pipeline tubes. The task served as the official inauguration of the project.

When finished the pipeline will connect the east coast of Venezuela's Lake Maracaibo with the Colombian gas fields of Puerto Ballena west of the Guajira Peninsula and will be able to transport up to 200 million cubic feet of methane gas per day. The stretch that began construction Saturday was dubbed "Antonio Ricaurte" after the Colombian officer who fought in the Liberator Simon Bolivar's patriot army during the War of Independence. The Trans-Caribbean Gas Pipeline, as it has been officially dubbed, is planned to eventually continue on to Panama and from there to the Pacific Ocean and the Central American market.

As a first step the natural gas pipeline will enable Colombia to send gas to Maracaibo for four years and then, once that area is connected to the natural gas deposits in eastern Venezuela sometime around 2011, will carry Venezuelan gas to Colombia.

The importance of the project was highlighted by the three presidents shortly after they arrived in Maracaibo, 700 kilometers (435 miles) west of Caracas and very close to the place where the project's inaugural ceremony took place.

"This is a gas pipeline that will aid both countries. We believe it will start the process of integration with our neighbor Panama, and so will help us all to progress," Uribe said.

For his part Torrijos "welcomed this generous effort by Venezuela and Colombia" and said that when the gas pipeline reaches his country "it will allow us to resolve our development problems."

Chavez also praised the construction of the gas pipeline and said that "it will be very important for Venezuela and Colombia." "We're thinking of extending it afterwards to the Pacific and to Panama," he said.

Besides the Trans-Caribbean Gas Pipeline, Venzuela is planning a Great Southern Gas Pipeline which will go from deposits in the eastern Venezuela all the way to Argentina. Detractors call that project, which has a projected cost of $20 billion, pharaonic.

Separately, the leftist-populist Chavez used the occasion of Uribe's visit to state vehemently that he has not nor will not lend support to any group that has taken up arms against the Colombian government.

"All Colombia has to know this, all political and military elements and all the Colombian people: neither the Venezuelan government nor the people support or will support any armed movement in Colombia," Chavez said.

Two leftist guerrilla armies have waged a decades-old revolution against a succession of Colombian governments.