  |
Bolivia seeks to double price of gas for Brazil
AFP
LA PAZ
Petroleumworld.com 05 31 06Bolivia wants to double the price of gas it sells to Brazil, oil and gas minister Andres Soliz told AFP Tuesday.
La Paz wants Brazil to pay 7.50 dollars per million BTU (mmBTU), nearly twice the 3.80 dollars Brazil now pays.
Brazil imports on average 25 million cubic meters of gas everyday from Bolivia.
Soliz explained that Bolivia had based the new price on what Brazilian consumers pay for diesel oil and also on the seven dollars per mmBTU that Chile pays for gas from Indonesia.
Bolivian President Evo Morales seized foreign investors' oil and gas sites on May 1. He later said he intended to raised by 60 percent the price of gas sold to Brazil.
Soliz said he anticipated difficult negotiations with Brazil over the issue, but added that discussions were for the moment "paralyzed".
Brazil is the largest investor in Bolivia's oil and gas sector and controls about 14.5 percent of the country's gas reserves, the second largest in south America, after Venezuela.
AFP 30 1935 GMT 05 06
Copyright © 1994-2006 Agence France-Presse. All Rights Reserved.
Your
feedback is important to us!
We invite all our readers to share with us
their views and comments about this article.
Write to editor@petroleumworld.com
Any
question or suggestions, please write to:
editor@petroleumworld.com
Best
Viewed with IE
5.01+
Windows
NT 4.0, '95, '98 and ME +/ 800x600 pixels