MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Morales focuses on investments

Bolivian President Evo Morales has called a meeting with foreign oil companies operating in the country to discuss future investment in the nationalized energy industry, the government said yesterday.

"We want to guarantee a quick start to investments by (energy) companies, so we can count on the extra volumes of (natural) gas and oil," Energy Minister Carlos Villegas said.

Villegas told reporters the meeting would take place between Dec. 20 and 23 and that Morales would attend. The leftist president announced the nationalization of the natural gas-dominated energy sector earlier this year.

In late October, 10 companies, including Petrobras, Spain's Repsol YPF and France's Total, signed contracts to continue operating in the South American country. They agreed to grant a larger share of their profits to the Bolivian state, in line with the nationalization.

According to official figures, through the new contracts the Bolivian state will receive, on average, 70 percent of gross income from energy operations, and the remaining 30 percent share will go to the private companies.

Villegas said that meant impoverished Bolivia would receive some $67 billion in revenue in the next 20 years, a figure he described as "a conservative estimate." Morales has vowed to invest the revenue to bring prosperity to Bolivia -- South America's poorest country despite having its biggest natural gas reserves after Venezuela.

Bolivia's government has said that the new contracts call for investments worth US$3.51 billion between 2007 and 2010, a crucial period as Bolivia has agreed to quadruple natural gas exports to Argentina from the current maximum of 7.7 million cubic meters a day over a 20-year period starting in 2010 .

The deals should come into place before year-end, once they are legally registered. In an effort to increase transparency, state-owned energy company YPFB has made all the contracts, which amount to tens of thousands of pages, public through its Web site.

Also yesterday, Brazil's government said state-controlled energy company Petrobras, the largest investor in Bolivian energy, was considering resuming investments in Bolivia after the new contracts were signed into law by Morales on Sunday. Petrobras suspended new investment in Bolivia last year, and since then has declined to make specific spending commitments.