
Chilean officials reached agreement Tuesday with the Citizens Assembly of Magallanes over an increase in natural gas prices that sparked a week-long general strike in the remote southern region, sources involved in the talks said.

Energy and Mining Minister Laurence Golborne insisted on the last proposal made by the Chilean government to stop manifestations which would imply a 3% increase in hydrocarbon.

The Governor of Tierra del Fuego announced on Radio 10 that they are awaiting the results of the meetings taking place in Chile to resolve the conflict in Punta Arenas which is affecting Argentine tourists.

Vladimiro Mimica, Mayor of Punta Arenas, expressed that the measures taken by Sebastián Piñera’s government to invoke the Security Law in order to stop protests in Magallanes due to gas price hikes were “an overaction and inopportune”.

THE announcement today by the organisers of the general strike in the Magallanes Region of Chile that there will be some “flexibility” in the road blocks currently in place outside the city of Punta Arenas will no doubt cause some easing of the pressure on the Chilean President to find a solution.

The southern Chilean city of Punta Arenas had its largest strike in decades Wednesday in response to a government proposal to increase the price of gas in the region by 20%.

Magallanes in the extreme south of Chile became the region with the lowest unemployment in the country during the September-November quarter. According to the official Chilean statistics office the jobless rate in Magallanes dropped to 4.1% compared to the national 7.1%.

The Latin American oil and gas explorer and producer GeoPark which has been successfully drilling for oil and gas in the extreme south of Chile has made a private placement of 133 million US dollars to invest in expanding activities.

The Chilean air force plane carrying President Sebastian Piñera and his Ecuadorian counterpart, Rafael Correa, to Antarctica was forced to return to Punta Arenas, extreme south of Chile, after the pilots found it impossible to land due to bad weather, officials said.

Chile’s DAP airlines, which at one time was the link between Punta Arenas and the Falkland Islands, has incorporated a second BAE-146 for seasonal charter flights to Antarctica.