Bolivia

Oct'03 unrest in Bolivia is increasing. Root causes include the war on drugs and privatization of natural resources, specifically natural gas.

"The Pacific LNG consortium, made up of the transnational corporations Repsol from Spain, British Gas, and the U.S. corporation Panamerican Gas, would pump and transport the gas, and Sempra Energy would build a regasification plant in northern Mexico and sell it to both Mexico and the U.S. state of California."[1]

• Jan'02 "The removal of Morales from parliament, decided Wednesday by the Chamber of Deputies, "is going to throw the country into chaos."
• Apr'02 "Bolivia, which has natural gas reserves equivalent to more than four billion barrels of oil, also plans to use the pipeline to export natural gas to the United States. Construction of the pipeline and a liquefaction plant in whichever port is chosen, the expansion of the shipping installations, the creation of a shipping fleet, and the construction of a regasification plant in the United States will require an investment of five billion dollars."
• Jun'02 Bolivian Presidential Election. " The 11 candidates seeking to succeed President Jorge Quiroga closed their election campaigns Thursday amidst a row triggered by Washington's ambassador in La Paz, Manuel Rocha, who urged Bolivians not to vote for the leader of the coca-farmers, Evo Morales, of the leftist Movement towards Socialism (MAS). Rocha warned that if Morales won, the United States would cut off all economic aid and postpone a six-billion-dollar project to build a pipeline and liquefaction plant to export Bolivian natural gas to the United States from an as-yet unspecified Pacific Ocean port in Peru or Chile."