[A-List] Bolivia: ten thousand storm natural gas plants, hold 47 police hostage. APDH(B) to mediate.

["Charles Brown" <cbrown@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

" 
President Evo Morales urged the provincial authorities to restore  
order and called on people in the region not to fight over money."

CB: Wise words


Thursday, April 19, 2007   17:04 GMT

BOLIVIA:
One Dead, Police Held Hostage in Provincial Gas Dispute

Franz Chávez

LA PAZ, Apr 19 (IPS) - Protesters stormed natural gas plants in the  
Bolivian border town of Yacuiba and took 47 police officers hostage  
after a demonstrator was killed, in the midst of a provincial dispute  
for control over a gas field that could generate some 100 million  
dollars a year in taxes.

Yacuiba is on the border with Argentina in the southern Bolivian  
province of Tarija. Two districts in that department, O'Connor and  
Gran Chaco, have been involved in a dispute over their borders since  
2003, shortly after the discovery of the vast Margarita gas field,  
which has 25 trillion cubic feet of natural gas reserves and is  
operated by the Spanish-Argentine Repsol-YPF.

The government said Thursday that natural gas exports to Argentina  
are "completely normal," despite the disturbances.

The protests in Yacuiba, which is located in Gran Chaco, were a  
response to roadblocks staged two weeks ago in O'Connor.

Bolivia, whose 48 trillion cubic feet of natural gas are the second- 
largest reserves in South America after Venezuela's, exports 27  
million cubic metres a day to Brazil and seven million to Argentina.

President Evo Morales urged the provincial authorities to restore  
order and called on people in the region not to fight over money.

On Wednesday afternoon, some 10,000 people swarmed the installations  
of the private consortium Transredes, a subsidiary of Royal Dutch  
Shell. They set fire to two vehicles of the state-owned oil company  
Yacimientos Petrolíferos Fiscales de Bolivia (YPFB), smashed  
computers and seized 2,000 liquefied gas cylinders.

Vandalism and looting were also reported in downtown Yacuiba late  
Wednesday, according to radio reports.

A police chief and 46 officers were disarmed and held Wednesday night  
in municipal offices, awaiting talks for their release, while a  
shouting crowd outside demanded their weapons.

The Permanent Assembly for Human Rights of Bolivia (APDHB) was trying  
to broker talks between the government and the protesters, Víctor  
Farfán, a representative of the organisation, told IPS.

"The gas field in dispute belongs to Bolivia.and should not trigger  
clashes between brothers and sisters," said the activist.

Meanwhile, people in O'Connor are also laying claim to the Margarita  
field and are threatening to close the pipeline valves in a plant in  
the town of Entre Ríos.

During an assembly in that town, civic leaders decided "to defend the  
gas royalties and taxes and our territory with bloodshed and  
thousands of dead bodies."

Late Tuesday, a bullet supposedly fired by one of the soldiers  
guarding the Transredes plants in Villamontes, in Gran Chaco, injured  
37-year-old Derman Ruiz, who died on arrival at the hospital. He  
reportedly bled to death from a wound in his leg.

The incident occurred when residents of Villamontes occupied the  
company's installations with the aim of shutting the valves of  
pipelines that run to the city of Tarija, the provincial capital, and  
across the border to Argentina.

Morales' chief of staff Juan Ramón Quintana explained that the  
government order to guard the gas plants was focused on preserving  
public assets and guaranteeing gas supplies, and clarified that the  
troops did not have instructions to use lethal force.

But on Wednesday morning, 11 people were injured by firearms in  
confrontations with the security forces deployed to the offices of  
Transredes in Yacuiba.

In the city of Tarija, the hospitals sent out an urgent appeal for  
blood donations, to save the lives of several gravely wounded patients.

Government spokesman Alex Contreras invited the leaders of the  
protests from the districts of O'Connor and Gran Chaco to an  
emergency meeting in La Paz, and told IPS that the Morales  
administration is seeking a peaceful solution to the dispute.

The district of O'Connor had jurisdiction over Chimeo, the area where  
the Margarita field is located, in elections. But after the field  
began to produce gas, Gran Chaco started to lay claim to the area.

Before the discovery of gas there, Chimeo was ignored and neglected,  
inhabited only by extremely poor families who depend on fishing and  
hunting for a living.

Yacuiba, Villamontes and Entre Ríos, where the disturbances have  
taken place, are located at least 70 kms from the gas field. But  
there are fears that the groups in conflict will head out to the  
Margarita field itself, which could lead to violent clashes between  
the different groups of protesters.

The border dispute was brought before the Tarija provincial  
government, but has been held up by legal questions for three years.  
Governor Mario Cossío of the opposition Nationalist Revolutionary  
Movement (MNR) has been deprived by the Morales administration of the  
authority to issue a decision himself.

The central government has blamed Cossío for instigating the  
protests, and has assigned the resolution of the dispute to  
authorities in the neighbouring province of Potosí. (FIN/2007)